Since May 2017, SparkUp, BusinessWorld’s multimedia platform for the business-minded youth, has been covering millennial-led start-ups and small and medium enterprises.

LIKE MANY Filipino-Chinese boys, 29-year-old Joshua Aragon, CEO and co-founder of online grocery platform Pushkart.ph, grew up as if he were destined to become a businessman.

AS FAR AS the internet is concerned, everyone who enters its realm is “at least 18 years old.” That includes the 13-year-old self of Iran-born Forbes under 30 lister Shahab Shabibi, back when he was lurking at 3 a.m. on Yahoo! Messenger (“My parents didn’t mind; I had high grades.”) to chat with a programmer he was building a company with.

IT WAS IN Africa that Carmina Bayombong, child of non-government organization workers, first caught glimpse of poverty. This was cemented around a decade later at the University of the Philippines Diliman where while finishing her degree in industrial engineering, she met other students who were forced to drop out due to lack of resources.

SO HOW have you been since our last interview?

FOUNDERS WHO were formerly employees have that one moment where they realized they had to give up their corporate careers. For Ginger Arboleda, the 33-year-old chief operating officer and cofounder of Taxumo, that moment came in 2012 when she was due to a promotion that would catapult her into an executive position at a banking giant she had been working at for more than six years.

AKABA’S 24–year–old Chief Operating Officer Daniel Lumain was immersed in implementing policies for government-run companies before the country changed leadership in 2016 and put an end to his two-year career.

I DON’T WANT to start a food business that solely sells food,” said Francis Reyes, the 25-year-old CEO of Caravan Food Group, Inc., parent company of rolled ice cream store Elait and donut shop OverDoughs. “I want to send a message through food,” he added. “I want to hire people who the usual food entrepreneurs wouldn’t hire.”

AT THE height of the AlDub love team phenomenon, Diane Yap and Lauren Gavino, who had been running an online flower shop for only a month then, received an order for 49 stems of red Ecuadorian roses to be delivered at the Philippine Arena in Bulacan, where some concert with ticket sales reaching P14 million would be filled with 55,000 people.

YOUNG CHEF Miko Aspiras channeled memories of childhood playgrounds in the Philippines to create a special dessert for his presentation during Madrid Fusion Manila 2016.

WHEN 28-year-old Katrina Chan returned to the Philippines in 2012 after finishing her studies in the US, the local tech start-up community was just in the “awareness and capacity building” stage, a stark contrast to where she came from.

FROM MERE slacker uniform, skateboard attire has seeped into the runways of the world’s fashion capitals.