MANILA, PHILIPPINES — After two years of virtual speaker sessions, business matching meetings, and online networking, IGNITE, the largest international innovation conference in the Philippines, is back. IGNITE 2022 FUSION, a five-day hybrid conference, was held from October 10 to October 14 at the Fairmont Hotel in Makati City.
Organized by Techshake, dentsu X Philippines, and Brainsparks, IGNITE has successfully continued to bring the Philippines to the international startup radar. This year’s theme highlighted how Innovation can drive Sustainability and Resilience, especially as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, which altered and accelerated our local technology startup landscape. Now that IGNITE is back in person, there was clearly no shortage of international guests flying in to witness how far our ecosystem has grown in the last few years.
The first day kicked off with the Shell LiveWIRE Accelerator program pitch day featuring their Top 3 Startups: Bambuhay, Pieza PH, and Suds Sustainable Pods. After a difficult deliberation among the judges, Bambuhay was selected as this year’s Shell LiveWire Grand Prize Winner. The second day featured a variety of workshops in collaboration with 917 Ventures, Xendit, and Microsoft to help their fellow founders and investors understand the evolving startup landscape. The third day featured startup pitches in partnership with Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) as well as a panel discussion on digital transformation. The fourth day highlighted different speaker sessions by Mynavi Corporation as well as their Blockchain panel discussion with speakers from overseas. Alongside this was their Venture Capital Accelerated course in partnership with Quest Ventures to help their fellow entrepreneurs and investors understand the venture capital landscape. The final day of the conference featured their international pitch event as well as the WILDFIRE Pitch Competition.
The Top 3 Startups: Smile API, ALLCARE, and Packworks, won a variety of prizes worth over $100,000 from their sponsors from Y&Archer, Xendit, Microsoft, QBO Innovation Hub, and 917 Ventures.
Among the three, Packworks was selected to represent the Philippines at the Startup World Cup Grand Finale 2023 in Silicon Valley and the chance to win $USD 1,000,000.
But that is not all. Through the Brella platform and onsite networking events, hundreds of attendees were able to match and meet to further help their startups scale. IGNITE 2022 Fusion not only paved the way for several of their guests to finally meet, but also showed to the rest of the Southeast Asian community how far our Philippine startups have grown.
Share your IGNITE experience using the hashtag #IGNITE2022FUSION and #IGNITEPH on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
