IdeaSpace launches annual competition for startups; will offer seed funding and more to winners

IdeaSpace is inviting all startups to join their annual national competition where the top 10 winners would walk away with up to PHP 2M (USD 49K) worth of prizes including seed funding, mentorships and training, office space, backroom operations support, intellectual property and legal services among other goodies. The contest is open to both local and global entries.

IdeaSpace President Martin Earl Valencia shared that there were already more than a hundred entries as of Dec 15, 2012. The deadline for submissions is January 7, 2013.

The organization is a Philippine-based non-profit formed by First Pacific, Metro Pacific, PLDT, Meralco, Smart, Digitel, Sun Cellular, SPI Global, Indofood, Philex Mining, Maynilad, MediaQuest and TV5. It provides funding cum incubation for early stage startups.

The contest was highlighted at the IdeaSpace year-end party which was held at the Fuller hall in AIM, Makati Philippines on Dec 15, 2012. Photo shows some of the country’s leading internet and ecommerce personalities that were tapped to be mentors:

L-R: Chito Bustamante (Chikka), Erik Garayblas (Kuyi Mobile, Streetfood Tycoon) , Maria Ressa (Rappler), Arianne David (Sulit), Anne Jacobe (Stryker, Shoephoric) and Ideaspace President Martin Earl Valencia. Winston Damarilo of Morphlabs is also a mentor.

The following are some of the PH startups that may join the competition.

Paybilis

Israel Brizuela of PayBilis (left) with Nicole Paterno.

Israel Brizuela of Paybilis.com with adviser Nicole Paterno. They’re somewhat similar to Greenpost. Nicole used to be with Silicon Valley-based Narra Venture Capital, which was founded by Dado Banatao.

Guestlist.PH

Ron “Ronster” Baetiong is the founder of Guestlist.ph who is shown in the picture below with Nicole. Guestlist.ph subscribers gain exclusive privileges and entry into the hottest night spots … for free.

GoRated.PH

Ragde Falcis beams that “GoRated.PH is to be a rating platform for virtually anything”. They are initially rating food retail spots as 40% of online searches in the Philippines are related to food. Once they fine tune their app, they can apply the same approach to other categories easily. Ragde is currently working with Christian Blanquera  of Openovate Labs to speed up their execution.