By Robert A. Vergara, Jr., Digital Reporter
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.
Hailing from the Go family of mall and supermarket chain Ever Gotesco, Aragon was exposed to operations at an early age, allowing him to learn the fundamentals of running a business.
But his dad always told him: “When you turn 30, make sure you’re starting your own business. You should be able to start something by yourself because after 30 it will be riskier for you because you already have your family and kids. Whatever you want to do, start before you’re 30.”
And so Aragon left the family business in 2015.
He tapped former De La Salle University-Manila schoolmate Bryan Reyes, whose background is in information technology. After several discussions on possible ways to “innovate” and “improve Filipinos’ lives,” the two came up with the idea of creating a digital grocery platform that will allow users to buy grocery items in as fast as 15 minutes.
“One of the low-hanging fruits was online groceries because my family runs a supermarket chain,” he admitted. Launched in April 2017, Pushkart.ph has two partners: Fisher Supermarket and of course, Ever Supermarket. The company charges users P199 for every purchase below P2,000. Delivery of products worth above P5,000 is free.
In a year, the platform has already amassed an estimated 100,000 users and keeps growing by 30% per month in terms of revenues and basket size.
This year, the company eyes expansion in provinces outside Luzon, specifically in Cebu, Davao, and Bacolod.
For Aragon, it’s the timing that really brought the company to its early success.
Philippine e-commerce has witnessed an unprecedented growth in the past three years, as many Filipinos shift from traditional brick-and-mortar shops to their online counterparts to buy goods and services. From fashion items and electronic gadgets, consumers can now also use the internet to fill their pantries.
“I see that there’s a lot of people who are afraid of the inconvenience of traditional groceries, so this is the right time right wave to get into the market,” he said. “From our point of view it’s convenience. An average Filipino spends two to four hours shopping in a day, so that’s the pain point we’re trying to solve.”

By Robert A. Vergara, Jr., Digital Reporter
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.
This led Ms. Bayombong, now 24, to establish InvestEd: a Filipino start-up engaged in matching student borrowers with lenders via an online platform.
Launched in December 2016, InvestEd offers student loans amounting from P10,000 to P80,000. Students need only to create a borrower account invested.ph online, get notified of qualification within seven business days, be interviewed for a final assessment, and sign a loan agreement that they will pay their loan after finishing their degree.
InvestEd gets investors — lenders — who are promised that they can grow their money for 7%-11% per annum with a minimum amount of P100,000, deposited in tranches.
To secure their investment, a six-point approach to repayment is enforced. This includes multiple matching, where a lender is matched with at least three borrowers to reduce risk, as well as a credit investigation technology using a credit scoring and profiling algorithm powered by artificial intelligence. Lenders are repaid bi-monthly over 12 to 36 months, depending on the student’s loan amount and starting salary. An amortization schedule is provided after depositing their pledge.
Invested was recently awarded a $100,000 grant from the government of Dubai last week to grow its number of loaners from 70 to 3,500. The company is also currently developing a scoring system to conduct the applicants’ background check using social media data, as well as a technology that will shorten the application process to 10 minutes.
“In 2017, we had a different business model,” Ms. Bayombong shared. “We didn’t have service fee, and we only had a very low interest rate. It couldn’t even cover 20% of our costs. We could’ve kept our previous business model and just rely on donations and lenders. With that model we would probably help a thousand students in 10 years.”
But with the revamped and “more sustainable” model, she says, “we could help 10,000 students in just three years.”

By Robert A. Vergara, Jr., Digital Reporter
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.
“I was happy but I wanted to do so much more,” she said in a forum organized by SparkUp in April. “I wanted to see the direct impact that I could have to people.”
That same year, she became pregnant again, following a miscarriage in 2010.
Arboleda recalled, “I couldn’t see myself as one of the executives of the bank. When I found out that I was pregnant again, I realized that [maybe it’s time] to focus on living my life again.”
So in January 2013, a few months after she left the corporate world, Arboleda began organizing Manila Workshops — a series of 101 sessions for aspiring entrepreneurs and freelancers. “After a few work shops, I realized that it was what I want to do,” she said. “I want to see that our attendees indeed follow their dreams.”
And in that process, Arboleda stumbled upon another idea. “Things started when I was doing my taxes,” she recounted. “I found it frustrating. It was so tedious. I had to line up at the BIR and renew a lot of business papers, and numbers aren’t my forte.”
In 2015, Arboleda with her husband EJ, who has a 15-year background in IT, came up with the idea of creating a platform that would automate the rigorous process of filling taxes for local entrepreneurs and freelancers: an app which they christened Taxumo.
The two began presenting the idea in pitching competitions and later on became part of Echelon Asia Summit’s top 100 start-ups and IdeaSpace’s incubation program, both giving the company seed funding and mentorship opportunities, among other benefits. Last year, the company also received the four-year tax holiday grant from DTI’s Board of Investments.
Taxumo is now valued at $1.5 million, following a funding round.
But for Arboleda, valuations are just “all about $1 billion,” harking to the number required to call a start-up a unicorn. More important to her, she says, is “helping 100 million Filipinos. For us, that matters more than the valuation.”

By Robert A. Vergara, Jr., Digital Reporter
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.
But that backdrop gave him “not just the connections,” but also the fuel to continue being of service to his countrymen. He then returned to his undergraduate thesis at the Ateneo de Manila University and grew it into what Akaba is today: a social enterprise selling bags and accessories made of handwoven textiles by over 100 weavers from Ilocos Norte, Isabela, Abra, Oriental Mindoro, Zamboanga, Sulu, Basilan, Iloilo and South Cotabato.
“It’s our mission to help these weavers promote their artistry and craftsmanship, but at the same time create a sustainable business that is relevant to the supply chain,” he said. “When we went to Ilocos Norte, we found out that a lot of weavers create handwoven textiles for around a month or so, but only sell them for around P20 per yard, and when we went to the market we actually saw middle men selling them for P150 to P200.”
Unlike many handwoven crafts, however, Akaba didn’t target the so-called “tita market.” “We chose a younger market and lowered our price points. What we always say is if you buy a high-end product worth P10,000, sure you’ve helped a community, but when is the next time you’ll help them? We can sell a product for around P1,500, sell a hundred pieces, and basically continuously support the communities.”
Akaba currently sells its wares across major malls, but because it aims to become an established “Southeast Asian brand,” it is also expecting to enter e-commerce platform Amazon to tap the American market this year, on top of its plan to expand its ties with Cambio Market to further introduce the brand in Canada. Lumain added that the team is also considering to widen its Asian market by selling its products in Hong Kong and Japan.
“I always believe that poverty is not just an economic situation, it’s a mind-set problem,” he said. “These people changing their views, believing that there’s a chance for them to have a better life, that in itself is the biggest achievement that we’ve had.”

By Robert A. Vergara, Jr., Digital Reporter
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.”
Graduates from College of Saint Benilde’s School for the Deaf currently staff Elait’s branches in three malls. The company is also in the process of employing more people with autism or down syndrome for OverDough’s current stalls.
This ambitious idea, Reyes admitted, was risky for a service-oriented business, especially in this age of social media when one’s dissatisfaction can easily taint a brand’s reputation.
“I didn’t know how the public would react so, at first, we paired up deaf employees with those who can hear, then eventually we saw that they can handle things by themselves,” he recalled. “That’s when we decided that everyone would be deaf in the whole team.”
Reyes, who holds a degree in hotel, restaurant and institution management from the University of the Philippines, hails from the family behind clinic chain SkinStation. And while that kind of background might attest to his business potential, it also posed a challenge: some mall operators would press him about building his own brand when he could capitalize on their already established family business. After all, the playing field for dessert concepts was already dominated by big, mostly foreign, players like, say, Dunkin’ Donuts or Dairy Queen.
“When I was trying to pitch our concept to mall owners, I really had to push the idea that what we’re different, that what we’re doing is something else,” he said.
The persistence, however, did pay off. The company has earned enough profits to sustain operations and even fund expansion plans.
Yet more than the money, Reyes considers the fulfillment of his deaf employees as his biggest achievement in business to date.
“When I was interviewing them at the start, their goal was just to survive and support their families,” he said. “Now, they really appreciate the business more. They really take care of it, and they treat the branch as their home. They have a place to belong to.”

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.
“Everyone in the US was working or was aspiring to work in Silicon Valley,” she recounted. “When I came to the Philippines, I wondered where the tech scene was, who the start-up guys were, and I quickly found out that there was almost no scene.”
Ms. Chan, who graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in materials science and engineering, with additional major in business administration, said she even struggled to find events organized for start-ups.
But a lot has changed since then. Fast forward to 2014, the country has witnessed the unprecedented rise in the number of new and innovative b u s i n e s s e s , mostly led by ambitious young entrepreneurs. The current count, according to a study by PwC Isla Lipana and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), is at around 300.
Along with this is the growing interest of the private sector to support or invest in these startups, paving the way for the establishment of organizations that support through mentorship and seed funding, among others.
Ms. Chan, for instance, began volunteering before heading the growth division of business incubator IdeaSpace, where she mentored early-stage start-ups. From there, she founded and now directs QBO Philippines, a partnership between government agencies such as the DTI and Department of Science and Technology and JPMorgan Philippines. Launched in 2016, QBO aims to support and grow the country’s startup ecosystem by providing forums, seminars, and even business incubation to local start-ups.
“We’re seeing a lot of growth across Southeast Asia,” she said. “More people being bullish that start-ups can actually compete in the global stage.”
But while Filipino startup founders already have ideas bright enough to conquer the global market, Ms. Chan observed they lack one more thing — angst.
“What I see missing a lot here is ambition and confidence in their idea,” she said. Relative to foreign founders whose startups command the level of funding, development and traction, Filipino founders, she observed, are “shy.” Instead, she says, founders should have “the grit to go through the initial pains.”
“What matters is who does it faster, who executes it better, and a lot of that is driven by the team or the founders,” she added.
“It’s not about the solution, it’s about the problem you’re solving,” she concluded. “If the problem exists, then your product will make sense.” — Robert A. Vergara, Jr.