Asia’s mobile Cupid

As Filipinos continuously fall in love with text messaging, Dennis Mendiola generates more ways to woo even more people to "the love affair."

A global player in wireless space, Dennis Mendiola’s early potentials in the field of engineering and logic design were further honed through scholastic training in the US. After graduating summa cum laude at the University of Pennsylvania and finishing a BS Economics degree in Wharton, Mendiola’s MBA at the prestigious Harvard University capped his prodiguous educational feats.

Fortunately, his boundless thirst for knowledge nurtured his equally boundless and far-flung innovations for communication.

After five years with private equity businesses, he has found his real romance on the Internet. His first love? The Short Messaging Service or SMS. But just like any "affair," Mendiola decided to experiment and thrive on more ways to spice up the "relationship."

The offshoot was wireless applications services development.

Mendiola is the co-founder of Next Century Partners (NCP) that looks for promising ventures in enabling technologies, Asia-centric infrastructure enabling and wireless. He also founded Incredibly Fast Internet Company, a holding company for several Internet-based businesses like eRegalo.com, which taps into billion dollar remittance and gifts market of OFWs, Bidshot.com, which caters to auction bidders in a wireless fashion and Chikka.com, which Mendiola believed enables him "to ride on the crest of two important waves, one being the mobile Internet, and the other, the growth of all SMS applications."

Chikka Asia Inc. was born out of Mendiola’s intimacy with enhanced mobile message services that crosses over geographical boundaries and that attends to all kinds of communication needs. True to its name, Chikka eventually spread like the juiciest gossip, only that something good came out of it.

It has enabled Philippine wireless space to rub elbows with the international scene, making it possible to communicate with someone in the Internet, bid for a merchandise or product, make payments and of course, create and maintain relationships with people in the convenience of mobile phones. Dancing to the beat of the changing trends, Mendiola touched on the possibility of fully-annexing the Internet to the mobile world.

As the Philippines boasts being the text messaging capital of the world, Mendiola hopes that the "love affair" endures among Filipinos along with his pursuit to discover more ways to keep the flame alive.

Pioneering technological wireless innovations in communication, Dennis Mendiola will be one of the ten inspiring Technopreneurs, Filipinos who have excelled in the field of technology, who will be given recognition by the Philippine Center of Entrepreneurship at the biggest technology expo ever, the Technonegosyo, slated on Sept. 14-15, 2006 at the World Trade Center. Technonegosyo is spearheaded by Presidential Consultant for Entrepreneurship and PCE founding trustee Jose Concepcion III and MDi Group managing director Myla Villanueva. Technonegosyo will render free admission to the public from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.