B1
G
SUNDAY, APRIL 8, 2018
Business
Ray S. Eñano, Editor / Roderick dela Cruz, Issue Editor business@manilastandard.net
THE RISE OF ASEAN DIGITAL COMPANIES
COCA-COLA EMPOWERS FILIPINA RETAILERS
RAB’S acquisition of the Southeast Asian business of California-based ridesharing services provider Uber highlighted the emergence of Asean digital companies with global aspirations.
“The spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation is very strong in Southeast Asia,” says Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, vice president and general manager of Amazon S3, Amazon Web Services’ object storage service. Bukovec is the keynote speaker during the AWS Summit 2018 on April 4 where 10,000 participants, including 6,000 who trooped to Singapore Expo and 4,000 who tuned in to the livestream event, learned more about the latest technologies such as the cloud, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning. “There is digital transformation happening all over the world. It is all based for the most part on AWS. Right here in Asia, we have many different enterprises that are working on this journey of digital transformation,” says Bukovec. AWS, the cloud-computing arm of Amazon. com, encourages companies to shift from onpremise IT infrastructure in the form of expensive servers and adopt its cloud solutions. It offers more than 130 services to startups and companies, including computing, storage, database, networking and application development as well as the latest solutions on analytics, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, voice recognition, image recognition, machine learning and virtual and augmented reality. AWS, which launched its first storage service called S3 in 2006, is the fastest technology company in history to hit $10 billion in annual run rate. “Today, AWS is a $20-billion run rate business, growing at 45 percent year-on-year. We have millions of active customers on the platform every single month. In the last two years, we opened offices in the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and most recently Indonesia. We are putting teams in place to work with customers and partners to benefit from AWS. We see this record adoption of the Internet in Asean. We have more than four million net new users that are joining and connecting to the Internet every single month,” says Nick Walton, managing director of AWS in Asean. Asean, a group of 10 Southeast Asian countries with a combined population of over 600 million, is now home to several unicorns or highly successful digital companies such as Grab, Iflix, Lazada, Go Jek, Traveloka and Tokopedia which are also AWS clients. “There are new companies that are evolving from day one. We have seen a lot of interesting, large startups across the region. Everyone is talking about—Go Jek, Grab, Traveloka, Tokopedia and so on, but what is interesting I think is the next batch of startups that are coming through,” says Walton. “They are not in the scale that big unicorns are. But we heard about Hellodoc which is a startup from Indonesia providing health services through their platform. We know companies like Shoppr in Malaysia who are using AWS to analyze 10 million images a day, helping provide fashion advice,” he says. Unicorns “I expect that in a couple years time, there should be another 15 to 20 unicorns in Southeast Asia. What we focus on in AWS is working with startups, both big and small, and helping set them up to be successful,” says Walton. Walton says there is also a good set of
Coca-Cola 5by20 Star program graduate Carmelita Aspiras looks after her sari-sari store, which grew after she applied her learnings from the program.
Executives of Amazon Web Services lead a panel discussion during the AWS Summit Singapore.
startups coming from the Philippines. “Coins. ph is the obvious one that is a real standout. But again, there is another batch of startups that are off the radar at the moment, but have good ideas—real smart, good entrepreneurs, ambitious entrepreneurs who run on AWS. Not all of them will be successful, but some will which is exciting,” says Walton. Greg Meehan, partner and vice president for sales of Supahands, says AWS enables their Kuala Lumpur-based company to reach out to remote employees and clients. “Supahands is a platform that connects large remote elastic workforce across Southeast Asia to businesses globally. It can scale out and scale back in, depending on our clients’ demand. We call our remote workers super agents. We have 2,000 super agents working on the platform primarily located in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines as well,” Meehan says. “We started in 2014. Originally, we were a virtual assistant app. After a couple of years in 2016, the company realized that there were larger requests that were coming through and more frequently. From there, we have grown to work with large multinationals in Malaysia, Singapore, across the world actually. The way we use AWS is it is completely scaleable. You only pay for what you actually use,” says Meehan. Ricky Dagelet, chief executive of Manila-based E-Science, says AWS also supports the operations
of their company. “We are an innovation company specialized in mobile technologies. We were founded in 2000. So it is almost our 19th year. Right now, we are specializing in mobile solutions for enterprise market. It is ideal for companies who have mobile field force, with big sales organizations, companies with a lot of field representatives that collect data from the field,” says Dagelet. E-Science plans to expand to other Southeast Asian countries. Walton says aside from startups, large traditional companies also take on the journey of digital transformation. “All companies need to become increasingly digital. This is what we have seen in the transformation of large enterprises. We need to be competitive. We need to serve better, because our customers expectation increase,” he says. “Companies like Globe Telecom definitely get that and understand that customer expectations continue to increase. That is why Globe uses AWS to drive innovation and to deliver new services to their mobile customers and drive loyalty and new customer growth,” says Walton. Santanu Dutt, head of solutions architecture of AWS for Malaysia and the Philippines, says Southeast Asia is a big market for AWS. “We had startups like Grab and Supahands of Malaysia, Coins.ph of the Philippines and other startups adopting us for their digital journey. But in the Turn to B2
Hundreds of engineers, IT executives, builders and developers from Asean attend the AWS Summit.
ODYSSEY FOUNDATION DEVELOPS 2,800 MICRO ENTREPRENEURS ANECITA C. Manayon, a 50-year-old street vendor in Dalandanan, Valenzuela City, saw her income rise after learning how to produce processed food products under a livelihood program provided by Odyssey Foundation Inc., the corporate social responsibility arm of CDO-Foodsphere Inc. “I used to sell only dried fish and vegetables. But when I learned how to produce siomai, empanada, embotido and other processed food products, I am now selling more products in Valenzuela City. My income also increased, thanks to Odyssey Foundation,” said Manayon. Manayon is one of the 2,800 beneficiaries of Odyssey Foundation’s Gabay Hanapbuhay livelihood program which turned them into micro entrepreneurs. The program equips mostly poor parents with entrepreneurial skills so that they can earn additional income for their families. It trains beneficiaries on cosmetology, facial treatment, food processing, fancy jewelry making, dishwashing liquid and soap making, massage therapy,
cosmetology, fancy accessories design, beads making and water lily weaving. OFI also provides starter kits to selected participants following assessment and evaluation. The program was created to help parents overcome economic problems such as inadequate household income, unemployment and malnutrition of children. Gina Briones, a 49-year-old housewife
in Malanday, Valenzuela City, now earns more from selling embotido to her neighbors, after receiving training on meat processing under Gabay Buhay. “After the training, I received orders from my neighbors who liked my embotido. I am now able to save, if there are many orders. Even my children now spend less in school, because I personally prepare their lunch,” she said. Helen Sumayang, a 47-year-old
housewife in Barangay Pasolo, Valenzuela City, said the training on massage therapy now enables her to earn. “My neighbors and friends know that I have been well trained and call me if they need massage. I earn P200 to P300 per message. This means additional income for my family,” she said. The livelihood program started on Oct. 8, 2011 in Barangay Maysan, Valenzuela with 142 parent participants under the first batch, according to Odyssey Foundation president Jerome Ong. Parents of undernourished children in Valenzuela City, home to the headquarters of CDO Foodsphere, were the initial beneficiaries to complement OFI’s supplemental feeding program called Gabay Nutrisyon. The program spread to other parts of Luzon amid the overwhelming response of community leaders. Different barangays in Caloocan City, Malabon City, Quezon City, Bulacan and Malvar, Batangas also benefited from the succeeding batches of the livelihood program.
WHEN Carmelita Aspiras opened her sari-sari store in 2012 to help fund her youngest son’s college education, she struggled to keep the business afloat. During her store’s first two years, she toiled with constantly depleting inventory and increasing debts. However, things began to change in 2015 when Carmelita joined the Coca-Cola 5by20 Sari-Sari Store Training and Access to Resources or Star program. Here, she underwent training on business professionalism, planning, and management which helped her conquer financial barriers and improve her small enterprise. “When I joined the Coke 5by20, I didn’t expect the positive effect it would have in my life. We really enjoyed our training because we learned a lot and experienced so many new things that we didn’t expect we would ever go through in our lives,” she says. Carmelita is just one of ove r 1 3 0 , 0 0 0 wo m e n m i c ro entrepreneurs that Coca-Cola has helped through the Star program since it was established in 2011. In line with the global campaign, the program aims to empower 200,000 Filipinas by 2020. With a growing number of participants in the STAR program, Coca-Cola Philippines decided to measure its impact among the trainees, conducting a research from 2015 to 2017 comprised of five waves of surveys among 500 graduates. The training proved to be highly beneficial for Carmelita as she easily put into practice her learnings like applying correct mark-up prices to products and paying attention to customer preferences and competition. According to the 5by20 Impact Report, 97 percent of the Star program participants found the training useful while 98 percent of them applied their learnings to their business. Upon using these newly-acquired skills, Carmelita also became a part of the 96 percent of women who reported business growth in their sari-sari stores and whose income, revenue and inventory size increased by 12 percent, 17 percent and 20 percent, respectively. Now, with a thriving sari-sari store business, Carmelita moves forward with entrepreneurial confidence, applying her learnings beyond the store, to other supplementary ventures such as selling home-cooked meals, offering made-to-order Filipino desserts and baked goods, and even selling clothes and shoes. She funds her side projects with income from her sari-sari store business to continuously invest towards a more stable financial future. Just as Carmelita now sees a clear path towards her goal of financial success, 65 percent of the Star microentrepreneurs are also confident of their future financial stability, substantially rising by 32 percent compared to the base line survey in 2015. The Star program was launched by Co c a - Co l a P h i l i p p i n e s t o complement the 5by20 global initiative of the brand which aims to empower 5 million women by 2020. Implemented in partnership with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, the program has become one of the most responsive and inclusive advocacies in the region which equips women micro-entrepreneurs with the necessary knowledge to achieve economic stability by giving them access to training, resources, and peer mentoring.