Even a recession isn’t enough to bring the Philippine startup ecosystem down. In 2022, Philippine startups raised a total of $1.1 billion, marking the second time the Philippine startup ecosystem has raised over $1 billion dollars, according to Foxmont Capital Partners’ 2023 Startup Report . In the last 12 years, the local ecosystem has grown exponentially and total deal value per year surged by a whopping 27x in the last 12 years.
Clearly, the ecosystem is alive and thriving. It’s a testament to Filipino tenacity and ingenuity, so it’s only right that we honor another batch of outstanding Filipino startup founders, entrepreneurs, and investors.
The second edition of Esquire’s Trailblazers List features over 50 movers and shakers in the local startup scene whose ideas, initiatives, and stories have inspired us. They're people who have made exciting moves over the past year and who we expect to do even greater things in the years ahead.
Note: You can see Esquire’s inaugural list here .
Jaison Gaisano and Carlo Delantar
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Amid the harsh odds against startups in the Philippines, the co-founders of Core Capital joined hands with Gobi Partners, a top Asian VC, on the $10 million Gobi-Core Fund . Focusing on seed and pre-Series A companies, the fund was set up specifically to assist high-potential tech startups to scale throughout the region. While Gaisano is a fourth-generation member of the prominent retail family and has a strong background in finance and management, Delantar is an award-winning social entrepreneur with a keen eye for investing in companies focused on sustainability. Earlier this year, Gobi-Core announced that it was named a co-investment partner in the Philippine government’s P500 million Startup Venture Fund, alongside ICCP SBI Venture Partners, Real Tech Holdings, Foxmont Capital Partners, and IdeaSpace Foundation.
Angeline Tham and George Royeca
Angeline Tham and George Royeca founded Angkas in 2016. The motorcycle ride-hailing app was borne out of the necessity for an affordable and accessible solution to the country’s transportation crisis, as the problem of heavy traffic, pockmarked streets, and limited mobility options remain to this day. Countless Filipinos have benefited from the ride-hailing app: not just the riding public, but many others who have found employment as Angkas riders. As of March 2023, there are about 30,000 Angkas drivers plying the streets of Metro Manila and Cebu, with plans to expand in other cities soon.
Diego Lorenzo and Jaime Gonzalez
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
Many people would underestimate the power that a good cup of coffee could have, but Diego Lorenzo and Jaime Gonzalez are not among them. Founded in February 2022 just as the Philippine economy was gaining traction post-pandemic, Pickup Coffee entered the market by offering quality coffee at affordable price points, as well as partnering with Filipino companies for its homegrown products. While its main thrust is accessibility at low prices, the company revolutionized the whole café experience by dominating the digital landscape and maintaining cloud stores across the city. Just over a year since it was founded, Pickup Coffee now operates over 50 locations in Metro Manila and Cebu. Fueled by their own brew, the founders are undoubtedly busy dreaming up new ways to bring their concoctions to more people.
Henry Motte-Muñoz
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
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Edukasyon.ph has been a mainstay in the Philippine startup ecosystem for almost a decade. Founded by Henry Motte-Muñoz, the edutech startup initially had a target of one million users when it launched in 2015. Eight years later, Edukasyon reached eight million users and found a new purpose after the pandemic changed the face of Philippine education. Acknowledging the learning challenges in the Philippines, the startup pivoted to tackle the need for tutoring outside of the classroom. Its paid tutoring service, Edge, caters to its growing K-12 market, while its legacy college services cater to its university-aged market. In just a few years, Edukasyon has become the Philippines’ education super app and a leading force in all things edutech in the country.
Sheila Marcelo and Kevin Yang
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
At the top of every Filipino’s priority is quality education. Seeing an increased need to improve access to learning, technophiles Sheila Marcelo and Kevin Yang launched Proof of Learn (POL)—a tech platform that uses blockchain technology to educate developers on Web3. Each of the founders is accomplished in their own right, with Marcelo hailed as one of the most successful Filipinos in Silicon Valley and holds multiple Harvard degrees under her belt, and Yang as a Stanford University wunderkind and years of experience in tech to boot. Established in December 2021, POL operates Metacrafters.io, which provides users with an immersive gaming experience that brings the metaverse to life—all while gaining more knowledge about the industry and earning more than what they invested in their education.
Macy Castillo
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
Macy Castillo is the former country lead of Shopee Philippines who has since founded Enstack , an SME-enabling super app designed to provide end-to-end support to local businesses. After her experience at Shopee, Castillo and her co-founder Geoffrey Prentice of Skype founded Enstack in 2021, and the startup has since secured $3 million from its Series A funding round led by Mangrove Capital Partners and Xendit. Enstack marks Mangrove’s first investment in Southeast Asia, and the startup has pledged to make good use of the fresh capital to grow 10x by the end of the year.
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Brett Doyle
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
The F&B sector is bouncing back from the pandemic, and Brett Doyle’s Mosaic Solutions plans to support the F&B community every step of the way. The all-in-one restaurant management platform provides data analytics, point of sales, profit optimization, and more, to restaurants, hotels, and retailers in the country. After securing $5 million in a Series A round in 2022, the startup is in the thick of expanding its user base and refining its cloud-based platform. Backed by Kickstart Ventures and GenTree Fund, Mosaic Solutions’ client pool includes some of the biggest names in the local F&B space: The Moment Group, Wildflower, and Barcino, just to name a few.
Joseph Tan, Rex Rodriguez, Rubi Concepcion
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
Co-founders Joseph Tan, Rex Rodriguez, Rubi Concepcion, and Henry Yeh founded prop-tech startup Uwi in 2021. The Y Combinator-backed startup identified the glaring problem of housing loans in the Philippines and sought to fix it. Uwi completely digitizes the mortgage broker process, connecting loan applicants to lenders and developers alike. The process of acquiring a housing loan is notoriously tedious, but Uwi aims to democratize access to housing loans so Filipinos can have a better shot at owning their own homes.
Carlos Otermin Barrera, Angel Ramiro, Andrew Koger, Saul Molla Cuesta, George Padin
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
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Buko Ventures understands the need to pay it forward. An angel fund managed by some of the leading figures in the Philippine startup ecosystem, Buko Ventures is setting out to find—and fund—pre-revenue and pre-launch ventures with the potential to become great. The angel fund is run by: Carlos Otermin Barrera, COO of Lazada Philippines; Angel Ramiro, head of LazMall at Lazada Philippines; Andrew Koger, founder and CEO of Goodwork.ph; Saul Molla Cuesta, former CFO of Lazada and founder of FlowerStore; and George Padin, CEO of Abstract Digital. Based on their track record, Buko Ventures’ bets usually turn out to be right. Some of the most notable startups in their portfolio are BackScoop, Better Teem, ChatGenie, Dumdum, Meetbit, Shipmates, and Twala.
Patrick and Alexandria Gentry
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
In the workplace, HR might just be the most under-appreciated unit, but Sprout Solutions is helping change that. Founded by husband-wife duo Patrick and Alexandria Gentry, Sprout Solutions has helped over 1,000 companies and thousands more employees in the Philippines through a completely digitized HR platform. Even during the pandemic, Sprout Solutions supported countless businesses. Recognized globally for its efficient software, the HR platform allows companies to automate payroll, recruitment, performance management, HR analytics, and more. Companies as large as Ayala Land and Dole use Sprout Solutions in the Philippines. This year, the company has committed to the ambitious target of doubling its client base as demand for its automated HR solutions continues to grow.
Nanette Medved-Po
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
She might still be known to some people as a former actress, but Nanette Medved-Po is doing so much more outside of the glare of the klieg lights. Besides her role as chairperson of the Po family council, she has become a passionate philanthropist, serving on several boards of NGOs, including WWF Philippines and The Hunger Project. The Plastic Credit Exchange (PCX) is Nanette Medved Po’s latest initiative that’s turning advocacy into impact. PCX applies the concept of carbon credits to plastic and works with local communities and governments to create an ecosystem that eliminates plastic from the environment. The Philippines is notorious for its plastic waste crisis notably displayed in the so-called "sachet economy," but PCX’s initiatives, like the Aling Tindera waste-to-cash program, are motivating communities to alter their behavior toward responsible plastic disposal. The first nonprofit of its kind, PCX is gunning to clean up over 80 years of plastic waste in the Philippines.
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Gabriel Singson Jr.
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
Oak Drive Ventures might stay below the radar, but its impact is anything but. The boutique investment company has invested in the likes of PDAX, Kraver’s Canteen, Tonik, and Archipelago Labs, as well regional startups like Colony and FlySpaces. Since its inception, Oak Drive Ventures has been led by CEO Gabriel Singson Jr., who has overseen the boutique VC's strategic investments in real estate, hospitality, finance, and more.
Lance Pormarejo
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
Founded in 2022, Archipelago Labs (A-Labs) is making sure that the Philippines’ Web3 ecosystem is here to stay. Co-founded by executive director Lance Pormarejo, the startup accelerator recently launched a $10 million fund to invest in the growth of Web3 businesses and entrepreneurs. With the support of partners like PDAX, Oak Drive Ventures, and Magellan Digital Investment Group, A-Labs is positioning itself as a key player in the local Web3 space. The accelerator plans to bolster the Philippines’ nascent Web3 ecosystem through hackathons, incubation and accelerator programs, investment funding, and more. One of its first investments was Playdex , the first-ever NFT rental marketplace and another pillar in the Web3 space.
Constantin Robertz
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
Angel investor and serial entrepreneur Constantin Robertz’ latest startup Locad began the year on a high note by raising $11 million in Series A funding. Locad, which is the fruition of Robertz’s years-long logistics expertise, plans to use its latest fundraising to expand its supply chain platform. An end-to-end service, Locad combines orders and delivery requests across multiple sales channels like Lazada and TikTok and then delivers these orders straight to your door. Locad aims to make the supply chain as frictionless as possible as e-commerce is only expected to grow in the region. In addition to running his own startup, Robertz is also active in early stage investing with Kaya Founders and XA Network.
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Angela Chen-Delantar and Aurelien Chu
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
Data is the next language Filipinos need to learn. Data is the future of work, and data analysis as a skill is now practically mandatory for career growth. Enter Eskwelabs , an edutech startup specializing in upskilling in data literacy, analytics, and science. Founded in 2019 by CEO Angela Chen-Delantar and COO Aurelien Chu, Eskwelabs is backed by investors like Antler, Eduspaze, Citrine Capital, and Novus Paradigm Capital. Through Eskwelabs’ boot camps and programs, Filipinos with zero background in data can learn the skills of the trade within a matter of weeks instead of years. Education has always been the biggest impediment for Filipinos looking to improve their lives, and Eskwelabs’ founders are committed to getting rid of that barrier that blocks Filipinos from better opportunities.
Tina Sabarre
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
In this new post-pandemic era, e-pharmacies are becoming the norm, which is where Tina Sabarre’s pharma-tech startup Mediclick comes in. The online pharmacy was founded in 2020 at the height of the pandemic and has since been delivering healthcare products and prescriptions right to customers' doorstep. Equipped with her vast experience at Luxasia and Johnson & Johnson, Sabarre and her co-founder Lion Grunenberg grew the startup’s revenue 4.5x from 2021 to 2022, and plan to take it even further after securing $300,000 in pre-seed funding.
JT Solis
PHOTO: Warren Espejo
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For an agricultural country, the Philippines has too many agricultural problems—and not enough solutions. Luckily, Mayani is stepping up its game to improve the state of agriculture in the Philippines in light of inflated farm gate prices and middlemen obstructions. Founded by JT Solis, Mayani is one of the fastest-growing farm-to-table platforms in the Philippines and now connects over 70,000 farmers to 11,000 B2C customers and B2B companies. The agritech startup recently raised $1.7 million in seed funding through AgFunder, Atlas Ventures, Accelerating Asia Ventures, and others. By eliminating the middleman and giving farmers more agency, Mayani is helping boost farm-gate and post-catch income by at least 30 percent for its network of farmers and fishermen.
Nina Dizon Cabrera
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
More than empowering Filipino women with top-of-the-line beauty products, Niv Della Beauty Innovations’ Nina Ellaine Dizon-Cabrera has become the poster girl for the feminist entrepreneur. Best known for brands such as Colourette Cosmetics and Fresh Formula, Cabrera caters to the Filipino market in a way that not even the biggest mainstream beauty brands can—by offering products that celebrate Filipino beauty through diversity and inclusivity. Far more than cosmetics, her feminism is rooted in social justice. The founder says she donates a significant portion of her proceeds to aid political prisoners and survivors of natural calamities. She also supports Filipina-led businesses through the online community Boss Babes.
Alex Friedhoff, Toti Wong, and Tatiana Cziomer
At the height of the COVID-19 lockdown and what was arguably one of the lowest points of the global economy, Etaily was quick to respond by assisting local retailers in making the shift to e-commerce. In effect, Alex Friedhoff, Toti Wong, and Tatiana Cziomer provided Filipino brands with a lifeline to the digital world, sparing their businesses from the retail apocalypse in 2020. To date, Etaily has powered millions of transactions and expanded the reach of several Southeast Asian brands, scoring millions of dollars in investments that allow it to upgrade its technology for the benefit of its clientele. Over the past year, the startup scored significant partnerships with companies like Century Pacific Food and TikTok, as well as earning a three-star award as partner of Lazada. With Philippine e-commerce expected to balloon over the next few years, the Etaily is well-placed to be a key player in this frontier.
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Andreas Hufnagl
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
After his decade-long exposure to the corporate world, including the credentials of being a former McKinsey consultant and private equity investment professional, Andreas Hufnagl decided that he was prepared for more innovative endeavors. In 2021, he founded Armada Brands , a startup that invests and acquires high-performing direct-to-consumer brands in lifestyle, health & beauty across Southeast Asia and Australia. Upon acquisition by Armada Brands , the small companies have multiplied their sales growth by as much as 13x in less than a year. As its CEO, Hufnagl is constantly on the lookout for five-star brands with high potential, helping guarantee their success by providing financial capital and other resources.
Jess de Mesa
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
Jess de Mesa’s experience as a registered nurse opened her eyes to the harsh realities of healthcare for women in the Philippines. She then took matters into her own hands and founded Kindred Health Inc., a health service that takes on a more holistic approach to women’s health—from physical to mental, and everything in between. While its initial operations consisted of teleconsultations as a response to the moratorium on reproductive health services during the pandemic, Kindred opened a physical clinic in Taguig in December 2022 . Guided by her vision of fostering a safe space for women, De Mesa innovates not just in the method of doing business but in pushing her advocacy of women’s health as well.
Jaime de Los Angeles
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
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In a country where financial freedom is more of a privilege than a right, Jaime de los Angeles was determined to alleviate the plight of the average Filipino living life from paycheck to paycheck. With the intention of providing salary advances to the Filipino workforce, Jaime established Advance , an online digital lending platform with the ultimate goal of guaranteeing financial freedom for everyone. Advance provides quick, accessible credit lines on demand with zero percent interest rates for those who encounter urgent financial emergencies. Advance scored an additional $6 million in funding in December 2022 and inked a lucrative partnership with BPO company Sitel Philippines earlier this month. For De Los Angeles, leading a fintech company is not about prestige, but about providing service to Filipinos in need.
Carmina Bayombong
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
Carmina Bayombong is no stranger to honor and acclaim. The co-founder and CEO of groundbreaking student financing platform InvestED was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2021 and was included in Social Enablers’ Top 100 Most Inspiring Social Innovations and Entrepreneurs around the world in 2017. In 2019, she became a fellow of the prestigious Cartier Women’s Initiative, an entrepreneurship program that empowers female entrepreneurs. Last year, during a ceremony in Dubai, she and her company were honored by the Cartier Women’s Initiative with the Second Place Impact Award and $60,000 in grants as part of the “Improving Lives, Preserving the Planet, and Creating Opportunities” categories.
Jojo Malolos
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
We already wrote about Jojo Malolos as chief of JG Summit’s corporate VC arm JG Digital Equity Ventures (JG DEV) and co-CEO of GoTyme, the conglomerate’s BSP-licensed digital bank, in our 2022 list. This year, however, Malolos has taken on the job of president and CEO of startup superstar Paymongo . Named to the role after internal issues led to Paymongo co-founder Francis Plaza stepping down as CEO in November 2022, Malolos is now tasked to lead the payment solutions company in its next phase of growth, which includes the introduction of a suite of new products and services. Malolos is, of course, well-equipped for the job as he carries with him a wealth of experience in global banking and financial services.
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Nori Poblador
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
Honorio “Nori” Poblador IV is the managing partner and co-founder of Navegar , a private equity firm focused on Philippine companies with about $300 million in assets spread across two funds. Founded in 2011, Navegar should already be a familiar name within startup circles as it has invested in companies like The Bistro Group, Bo’s Coffee, TaskUs, Intellicare, Cloudstaff, and Great Deals E-Commerce. Clearly, Poblador and his team have the “nose” to scope out high-potential Filipino companies to help them grow even further. Earlier this year, Navegar joined Malaysian private equity firm Creador in investing in the Dali Stores discount retail chain, which was soon followed by a $15 million investment from the Asian Development Bank in the same company.
Dennis Ng
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
Mober was founded in 2015 and, eight years later, it’s become a strong player in the country’s highly competitive third-party delivery service industry. After earning the backing of the 2Go Group in 2018, the company founded by EY-trained auditor Dennis Ng now counts as clients some pretty big names in various industries, including retail: from Ikea, Nespresso, and SM Appliance Center, to Rockwell Land and Red Ribbon Bakeshop. Just this past year, Mober has made moves to improve and expand its services, from inking a deal with a location tech company to further hasten deliveries, to investing heavily in electric vehicles to pioneer the use of EVs in the delivery space in the country.
Brian Cu, Bam Mejia, Angelo Lee, Philippe Lorenzo
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
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We already know SariSuki as Brian Cu’s latest venture—a social commerce startup built on a “community group buy model”—but over the past year, the company was all about growth and expansion. After raising $10.7 million from regional and global investors in March 2022, it announced another funding round led by local corporate VC Kickstart Ventures amounting to $12.7 million in December last year. SariSuki is now present in areas like Metro Manila, Bulacan, Rizal, Cavite, parts of Batangas, and Quezon.
Erika Tatad
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
As a director of xchange Philippines , Tatad works with a team that invests in early-stage social enterprises in the Philippines. That means finding companies with a focus on addressing issues affecting marginalized communities and providing customized support and full-time mentorship to help them grow and achieve scale. Xchange’s portfolio includes startups like Ashoka, Bayani Brew, Hapinoy, the Electric Vehicle Expansion Enterprises (EVEE), and Rags 2 Riches. Tatad herself was educated at UC Berkeley and is a fellow of the Asia Society Class of 2010, a recipient of the 2015 Freedom for Excellence Award from the World Youth Alliance Asia Pacific, and a 2016 Kathryn Hoomkwap Awardee.
Patrick "Patch" Dulay
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
The Spark Project , which was founded and led by CEO Patrick Dulay, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Initially conceived as an online crowdfunding platform, it has since evolved and become an “enabling platform,” helping provide tools, and resources to founders and leaders looking to make a positive impact in society. Dulay says that, over the last 10 years, the Spark Project was able to launch 133 crowdfunding projects, raise 21 million funds for these projects, and incubate 105 enterprises. More importantly, TSP was able to inspire entrepreneurs to pursue their dreams of starting their own projects that would ultimately lead to fulfillment and success.
Mark Gorriceta
PHOTO: Warren Espejo
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Influence isn’t the exclusive domain of founders and investors; advisers often have considerable sway over industry players. In this regard, Mark Gorriceta is a major player in the local startup community. Managing partner and head of the corporate and technology media and telecommunications groups of Gorriceta, Africa, Cauton and Saavedra law firm, he has become legal counsel to many of the country’s most high-profile startup founders and leaders. Not surprising, considering he has extensive experience in capital markets, mergers and acquisitions, and securities law. An award-winning lawyer, Gorriceta is also a board trustee, corporate secretary, and chief legal officer of the Fintech Philippines Association, and vice chairman of the ICT Committee of the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines. Last November, his law firm organized the fourth edition of the Law and Tech Summit to discuss investments, breakthroughs, and policies within those two spheres.
King Alandy Dy, Jeff Tan, Rui Aguilar, Jig Young
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
King Alandy Dy is the twentysomething co-founder and CEO of Expedock , an AI-based outsourcing services provider in the international freight industry. The company developed proprietary tech that uses AI to transform paper documents into data, quickly classify them, and bring them into existing freight forwarder tools, essentially eliminating manual data entry. Although based in San Francisco, Alandy Dy is a Filipino who graduated from Stanford University, where he met the company’s eventual CTO Rui Aguiar. Back home, the CEO reconnected with childhood friend Jeff Tan, who brought to the company an extensive network and experience in managing the operations of the leading global forwarder in the Philippines. Together with fourth co-founder Jig Young, the team led the company in a seed round raise worth $4 million in 2021. Expedock banked an additional $13.5 million in a Series A round in August 2022, bringing its total amount raised to $17.5 million.
Cholo Tagaysay
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
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No less than Globe Telecom President and CEO Ernest Cu announced that, of the many business units under the telco giant, KonsultaMD has the biggest potential owing to the size of the market it is trying to address. The startup is led by its founder and CEO Cholo Tagaysay, who actually started his career in Globe in 2000 and has now come full circle now that KonsultaMD is under 917Ventures, the corporate venture builder of the Globe Group. The startup offers accessible and affordable healthcare online, provides on-demand doctor consultations, as well as access to many different medical services, including medicine delivery, home service diagnostics, and even fitness coaching and nutrition counseling. In 2022, KonsultaMD merged with Healthnow and AIDE to create what parent company Ayala Group says is the largest health tech startup in the country, with a user base of well over two million.
Martin Cu
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
Before becoming a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm 500 Global , Martin Cu led the Philippine operations of Ninja Van , known as one of the largest tech-enabled logistics startups in Southeast Asia. Aside from empowering the company to grow its network to cover 97 percent of the Philippines, Cu played a key role in helping grow Ninja Van into near-unicorn status. His strong business sense and keen understanding of startups are serving him well as he leads 500 Global, a $2.7-billion capital firm, to support fast-growing tech companies. 500 Global has so far invested in 340 Southeast Asian startups, including Grab, Carousell, and Bukalapak.
Ray Alimurung
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
As e-commerce becomes a norm in the Philippines, Lazada has cemented its place as a household name in everything and anything online shopping. Leading the Philippine operations of Lazada, whose goal is to serve 300 million customers by 2030, is Ray Alimurung , who is the first Filipino CEO of the e-commerce giant. He was recently named chairman of the Philippine office and is an adviser to Lazada’s Group CEO. Prior to leading Lazada, Alimurung worked with Amazon and Rocket Internet, and is now also an adviser and board member of several other startups.
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Nina Opida and Josef Werker
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
Nina Opida and Josef Werker have always dreamed of making “living circular as normal as possible,”, especially on a planet whose inhabitants are all about wanton spending and consumption. Together, the couple leads Humble Sustainability , a “circular economy startup” that helps companies big and small liquidate their aging stocks in order to stay profitable. Humble uses two channels to maximize unused and wasted inventory: high-quality items are sold online, while everything else is sent to its network of business-to-business (B2B) buyers and recyclers. It seems investors are keen on participating in this advocacy as well, as both Opida and Werker recently attracted investors such as Seedstars International Ventures, as well as angel investor Sagar Achanta, who held product leadership roles at Amazon, Booking.com, and Disney+.
Artie Lopez
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
His passion for entrepreneurship started out of college when tech startups were still called “dot-com companies.” Since he first got a taste of building ventures and enabling them to grow, Lopez found great satisfaction in seeing his portfolio of companies thrive while helping solve other people’s problems. Aside from scouting for high-impact investments for First Asia Venture Capital, he is also the co-founder of Brainsparks , a “founder-focused” incubator. With over 20 years of industry experience, Lopez coaches founders to develop their ideas, accelerate growth, and raise funds from investors globally. He is also the co-founder of NextPay, a Filipino homegrown fintech that has drawn investments from the Gokongwei, Sy, and Ayala families.
Omar Mahmoud
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
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As Creador’s managing director and country head for the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, Mahmoud has led the private equity firm’s strategic investments in successful Philippine startups. Some of the firm’s local investments include Angkas, the motorcycle ride-hailing app; Uno Digital Bank, one of only six licensed digital banks in the country; and most recently, Dali, a province-focused discount grocery with over 200 stores in the Philippines. Creador has also helped a number of Malaysian startups expand into the Philippines. The private equity firm is headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, but its active interest in the Philippines bodes well for the Philippine startup ecosystem.
John Aguilar
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
In 2017, serial entrepreneur John Aguilar launched the maiden season of The Final Pitch , the Philippine version of Shark Tank , and within six years, the show is now going international with its first-ever ASEAN edition. Through the show, Aguilar witnessed judges invest millions of dollars into Filipino startups, and coupled with his 20-plus years of experience as an entrepreneur, Aguilar felt it was time to compile all of his startup knowledge in his second book with Penguin Random House SEA: The Art and Science of the Pitch: The Ultimate Playbook for Pitching to Partners, Investors, and Reality TV Shows . The book is both a deep dive and a crash course on all things startup-related in the Philippines, with over 50 interviews with leading founders and investors in the community. If aspiring startup founders ever need a written guide to the Philippine startup ecosystem, Aguilar’s new book is a good place to start.
Jiro Reyes
ILLUSTRATION: Warren Espejo
During the height of the pandemic, the craze for cryptocurrencies in the Philippines soared to dizzying levels, which unfortunately led to many people losing their crypto bets due to a lack of understanding of the risks and how they can manage these digital investments. Jiro Reyes realized that, in order to empower Filipinos to become successful crypto investors, they first have to have a solid foundation on the basics of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Thus, he founded Bitskwela , an edutech platform that provides Filipinos of any ethnicity access to cryptocurrency crash courses and modules. Reyes, who is a graphic designer by profession, developed a platform that features crypto learning materials in English, Tagalog, Cebuano, and Ilocano, and is now a leading force in crypto education and adoption in the country.
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Methodology
The individuals featured in The Esquire Trailblazers List were chosen based on influence, power, reputation, and advocacy. We tried as much as possible not to repeat people from the inaugural list from last year, although some are here as well because of significant updates concerning their respective startups and/or investments. Only founders of companies operating in the Philippines and investors and personalities based in the Philippines and focusing on Filipino startups were included.
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