In the late 2016 at a coworking space in Alabang, Muntinlupa City, a few months after “retiring” as the country’s game development pioneer, Elson Niel S. Dagondon decided it was time to “start working again and tick off one item in my bucket list—invent something” to help modernize education in the country.
Dagondon founded the first local game development studio in 2001 that leading game developer and publisher, Thailand-based Pocket PlayLab Ltd., bought 14 years later.
In 2017, he collaborated with Calen Martin D. Legaspi of Orange&Bronze Software Labs to develop the prototype for an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered school management system. The school offers a complete suite of software to digitally transform learning institutions.
After many rounds of technical presentations, Education Technology (EdTech) startup Edusuite received P4.9-million in 2018 as one of the 15 pioneer grantees of the Startup Research Grant program of the Department of Science and Technology-Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development (DOST-PCIEERD).
“It is our direct help to start-ups who want to produce prototypes or improve the products, services and technologies that they have started,” said Russell M. Pili, chief of DOST-PCIEERD’s Research Information and Technology Transfer Division. Pili discussed “Pinoy Start-ups Innovations” in the recent DOST Report aired on DOSTv.
“With the funding, these start-ups can buy materials to improve their products, test these to adhere to the standards, and get the services of experts to help them design, fabricate and test their products or services,” Pili said.
DOST boosting start-ups
Transforming “early-stage technologies into market-ready products,” the DOST Startup Research Grant program has so far assisted 15 technology start-ups to “overcome research and development roadblocks, strengthen intellectual property, establish initial market traction and refine business model,” among other benefits.
“The DOST grant helped us hire people to make Edusuite a complete product that we can sell to schools,” Dagondon said.
Today, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, Edusuite runs in 10 learning institutions, from K to 12 schools to colleges and universities.
They are safely and efficiently ensuring their continuous operations through automated transactions and cloud-based computing solutions for their more than 20,000 students, faculty and administrators.
These include the management of student information and grading, class scheduling, automatic student advising, online enlistment and enrollment, faculty load, clearances, forecasting of class demand, automated scheduling and computation of assessments.
“The grant program is a very good project, and we are very glad that the government helped us,” Dagondon said.
Edusuite is currently being used at the Ateneo High School, CIIT College of Arts and Technology, Benedictine International School, International British Academy, King’s College of the Philippines, Sumulong College of Arts and Sciences, Batangas Eastern Colleges, Sacred Heart Academy of Pasig, University of San Agustin, and Joji Ilagan International Schools.
Edusuite is looking at serving a market of 2,300 listed colleges and universities in the country, most of which are privately funded, while it is also talking to the Department of Education on how it can serve public schools.
Start-ups for better normal
The country’s emerging technology start-ups and other DOST-PCIEERD grantees, such as Senti Techlabs (Senti AI) and Futuristic Aviation and Maritime Enterprise (FAME) are shaping a “better normal” for Filipinos during the Covid-19 pandemic.
These start-ups are treading the innovation path paved by funding and other support programs of the DOST-PCIEERD.
The biggest among these is the Technology Business Incubation (TBI) program that supports 45 technology business incubators in various universities and areas in the country.
TBI is currently “nurturing” 300 start-ups to become successful technopreneurs and free-standing enterprises.
“Our TBI program is helping 45 institutions—from Tuguegarao to Davao—that support start-ups involved not only in information and communications technology (ICT) or software development, but also in the fields of agriculture, aquaculture, food, and natural resources,” said Science Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña during the same online broadcast.
“I am happy that with our start-ups, we will have a bigger pool of entrepreneurs. Now even our colleges are teaching technopreneurship,” de la Peña said.
“We need new companies that can compete because if there is no innovation, we will be left behind,” de la Peña reiterated.
Start-ups are new ways of thinking, doing
From 100 start-ups identified by the DOST-Information and Communications Technology Office (ICTO) in 2015, start-ups in the country today are estimated to number from 400 to over 1,300, majority of which were put up between 2016 and 2017.
“Innovative start-ups are small companies with products or services based on technologies or ways and processes that have not been done before,” Pili said.
“Compared to big corporations, start-ups employ a few people and their business revolves around technology,” Pili said.
Usher: Pili said that many start-ups that received support from DOST have responded to the government’s call for solutions to stop the spread Covid-19, including the DOST-funded Universal Structural Health Evaluation and Recording System (Usher).
Usher Technologies Inc., a spin-off startup company established by engineers from Mapúa University, is led by Dr. Francis Aldrine A. Uy, dean of its School of Civil, Environmental and Geological Engineering.
From making “earthquake-recording instruments,” Usher created devices that have helped Filipinos cope with the pandemic, including the Go-Clean Disinfection Chamber that “sanitizes the body of a person entering its enclosure” before proceeding inside the hospitals and other establishments, and swab collection booths to prevent Covid-19 infections.
Usher first commercialized its “building structure health monitoring system” through DOST-PCIEERD’s Funding Assistance for Spin-off and Translation of Research in Advancing Commercialization (Fastrac) program.
“Fastrac helps our engineers, scientists and researchers in our universities to commercialize their researches and technologies to benefit our people,” Pili said.
FAME: Another beneficiary of Startup is the Futuristic Aviation and Maritime Enterprise Inc. (FAME), which first developed transponders or small-scale vessel trackers and monitors to communicate with and ensure the safety of fishers.
“FAME designed a [Covid-19] specimen collection booth—an enclosed system that is safe for both tester and those being tested—that is being used by the Department of Health,” Pili said.
DWARM: DOST TBI-funded DWARM Technologies Inc., founded by engineering students and alumni of the Far Eastern University Institute of Technology Innovation Center.
It developed an AI-powered thermal scanner that can be drone-mounted to “scan temperatures in crowded places and isolate those who have high temperature.”
We Trace: For apps that track the rate of Covid-19 infections, one of the first to be introduced was the community-tracing app WeTrace developed by DOST scholar Eddie F. Ybañez of the DOST-funded Genii Hut Technologies Corp.
WeTrace, which is now required for use by all workers in the province of Cebu to stem the spread of Covid-19, initially helped map the location of Covid-19 patients, report cases, and track contact locations.
“AI4Gov and DOST-funded Senti AI, both leading start-ups involved in artificial intelligence, made a chat bot to answer the questions of the public regarding Covid-19 through Viber and Facebook Messenger,” Pili said.
Project Ramdam: DOST-PCIEERD also helped a group of software developers with their Project Ramdam, or Resource Allocation Management, Distribution and Monitoring system made by Geographic Innovations for Development Solutions (GrIDS).
“They made a mobile app and Web platform used by local government units [LGUs] in distributing food packages and relief items,” Pili said.
Six barangays in Los Baños, Laguna, have benefited from using the platform and app that help local government units monitor “which households they have visited and those they still need to help” during their relief and cash assistance distribution operations.
Start-ups: Home-grown technologies by PCIEERD provides support to TBIs established in universities across the country, which serve as DOST’s “partners in research and development,” as they guide both start-ups and technopreneurs.
“Our students, researchers, and teachers usually have the technologies—with their teachings, research and ideas, even with their theses—that may be the source of start-ups,” Pili said.
A new program called TBI 4.0, a partnership between the DOST and universities that already have incubators, particularly those that were established since 2009, aims to “widen our linkage with incubators in other countries and other organizations that can help our incubators here.”
“This will improve our services and expose our start-ups to business practices in other countries,” he said.
PCIEERD is currently working on the new guidelines for the Startup Research Grant program based on Republic Act 1137, or the Innovative Startup Act that “aims to strengthen, promote, and develop an innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystem and culture in the Philippines.”
“We were tasked by law to produce guidelines for our programs for start-ups,” said de la Peña, referring to the mandate given to the DOST, the Department of Trade and Industry, and the Department of Information and Communications Technology to provide resources to help the country’s start-ups.
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