IT leaders eye Cebu as venture capital market

CEBU, Philippines - Pushing Cebu to realize its plan of becoming an ultimate ICT (Information Communication Technology) destination, and the next “Silicon Valley” in Asia, industry leaders are fast tracking the development of a “Venture Capital” (VC) market in Cebu.

This is one of the important highlights that will be tackled in the upcoming “Cebu ICT & BPO Conference” on June 8, 2010 to be held at the Radisson Blu Hotel, as part of the Cebu Business Month (CBM 2011) celebration.

Conference chairman Gerry Rapes said stakeholders will find solutions on how to grow the VC market in Cebu, in order to maximize the good talents in IT here, especially in the software development, and software engineering skills.

Businessmen will be encouraged to embrace the VC concept, as this is one of the measures that indicate the maturity of an ICT industry, said Rapes.

Because of this, the conference will also be bringing in the Developers Connect (DevCon) program of the Philippine Development Corporation, in cooperation with the Ayala Group.

In this component of the conference, IT geeks will be given opportunity to showcase their talents and build applications in 45 minutes for instance, of which potential venture capitalists will be able to find out business opportunities out of the geeks’ works.

Venture capitalists are those businessmen who will take advantage of a good concept and offer to fund the idea, as well as market the product.

However, the formation of a group of Venture Capitalists here would entail a taskful study on how to go about it, including the establishment of good mechanism that would give an effective venture capital market in Cebu.

Ideas for start-up businesses that could be funded through Venture Capital would not only limit to Information Technology (IT) related start-ups, but it would fund feasible ideas from the grassroots, or those business concepts that are produced by students.

Although, this idea has been floated in Cebu in the last couple of years, this opportunity has not been seriously taken into consideration by businessmen here.

In 2007, Cebuano entrepreneur-advocates started to consider the VC idea, however up to this time the formation of venture capital in Cebu still remain floating.

Venture Capitalism is only known most especially in the IT sector, of which in other countries, successful businessmen grouped together to fund good projects in relation to IT products and services.

Few years back, Ayala Group attempted to create the “idea farm” facility in Cebu, wherein it encouraged techno-prenuers to present their concepts involving innovation and the Ayala Group will supposed to serve as the Venture Capitalist once the company sees a huge business potential from a concept. But the project was later called off.      

Without a venture capitalist, a potential idea may be wasted, while only those few aspiring entrepreneurs or techno-prenuers who have good monetary back up will be able to take off in business. (FREEMAN)