MAKATI CITY – IGNITE 2018: The Philippine’s Premier Innovation Conference, organized by TechShake and dentsu X (a Dentsu Aegis Network brand) in collaboration with Brainsparks and Flyspaces, exceeded expectations as they went beyond the target number of 1,000 attendees during the first day of the event. The Rizal Ballroom of Makati-Shangri-la was jampacked for the plenary session and keynote speeches, while the afternoon break-out conference rooms for the three tracks: start up innovation, investment and acceleration and corporate innovation were filled with participants.
IGNITE was created specifically for the startup businesses in the Philippines, which needed some push in innovative ideas development and partnerships. IGNITE 2018 has collaborated with remarkable innovators and established institutions, and brought together multi-stakeholders including startup founders, corporations, international and local investors to answer the identified needs.
Notable innovative speakers were flown from all over the world, such as Paul Papadimitriou of Intelligencr, Paul Warrunthorn Kittiwongsunthorn of TenX, Ramses Gallego of IE Business School, Strategist and Evangelist of Symantec, Barbara Guerpillon of Unilever Foundry, James Tan of Quest Ventures, Spencer Lee of Air Asia, and Ray Tan of WeWork to share their respective experience, expertise and success stories.
Siegtraund Teh, Air Asia’s Group Chief Commercial Officer explains, “ IGNITE is a great place to meet like-minded peers across various industries that aim to change the way the corporate world should develop. From success stories to raw diamonds just waiting to be found, IGNITE feels more like an ignition for inspiration.”
Successful Business Matching
IGNITE’s main goal is to improve the Philippine startup ecosystem. Entrepreneurship has been thriving and this should be driven into its full potential. The Philippine startups have a lot to offer to investors and corporations, which they demonstrated through the elaborate pitches, enabled by IGNITE 2018’s business matching sessions held on the second day of the event. It provided the venue for the largest curated business matching activity between startups and corporates as well as startups and investors.
The business matching sessions became beneficial from both the investors and the startup businesses ends, as they participated in discussing promising business collaborations. Among the participating Investors were Dentsu Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures, Rebright Partners, KK Fund, REAPRA, Spiral Ventures, Gobi Partners, KickStart Ventures, and more than a total of 40+ investors.
Kazuo Koike, dentsu X’s Philippines Executive Director and co-organizer of IGNITE 2018 explained, “ We see the startup ecosystem igniting every year. We plan to scale up ext year again to surpass expectations of all parties involved. We are looking forward to more attendees and participants in IGNITE 2019.”
Donald Lim, Country Head and CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network Philippines commented, “To further our mission of innovating the way brands are built, IGNITE is established to provide a venue to help brands find innovative solutions and prepare themselves for a digital world dominated by the generation Z. We believe in getting ideas from all walks of life, and what better way than activating the startup community and providing them access to like-minded people and funding. We hope some of the fresh ideas we saw can come to fruition so we can all work together to make the world a better place.”
IGNITE’s success was also made possible because of the support of important key players in the government, accelerators, and incubators who were likewise present during the pitching event, and sponsors: Dentsu Ventures, IE School of Human Sciences & Technology, The Unilever Foundry, Unilever, ABS-CBN and ABS-CBN News Channel, Quad X, KickStart, PouchNation, BlocNation, Insular Life, PLDT Enterprise, Security Bank, Cybozu, Fujitsu, Payoneer, Trends and Concepts, Philippine Primer, Ayala Land, and Ayala Land Offices.
To learn more about IGNITE and its advocacy to promote the Philippine Startup ecosystem, visit www.ignite.ph and www.facebook.com/techshakeigniteph .
