Filipino Accelerator IdeaSpace Picks Country’s Top 20 Tech Startups

Many of the brighter ideas coming out of tech startups in the Philippines are health-related, with a heavy slant on mobile technologies.

Filipino incubator, IdeaSpace just whittled a list of 700 entries from startups down to just 20.

These 20 will eventually be halved further. IdeaSpace is offering 10 slots to startups to get six months incubation support and funding of up to $120,000 (PHP 5 million) each, to be decided on April 5. Teams from outside the Metro Manila area will also get housing support.

A look at the list of finalists reveals that healthcare is a top concern, and like many tech ideas in Asia’s emerging markets, the heavy reliance on mobile technologies is apparent. IdeaSpace would not provide more details on the startups’ models, in order to protect their intellectual property, it said.

IdeaSpace was founded about a year ago, as a non-profit incubator and accelerator for Filipino startups. It has the support of large firms in the country like telcos, hospitals, F&B and infrastructure conglomerates. It has about PHP 500 million ($12 million) to run for the next five years from its members.

One of its founders, Earl Martin Valencia, returned to the Philippines to help start IdeaSpace, after years working in technology in the Valley. Valencia has a Masters of Engineering degree from Cornell as well as an MBA from Stanford. He’s worked for Cisco Systems and Raytheon in California before returning to his home country, where he’s the head of corporate development and innovation for Smart, one of the two largest telcos in the Philippines.

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