by Erik Louwe Sala, SCS
School of Computer Studies (SCS) students Bryan Juanico (BS Information Technology), John Nicko Rosal (BS Computer Science) and Eliakem Revil (BS BA-Entrepreneurial Marketing) with adviser Lemuel Clark Velasco, comprising the Institute’sTeam Book Now won in the recently concluded Philippine Startup Challenge held on March 1, 2016 at Bayview Park Hotel, Manila. The team won for their web and mobile-based application that handles online bus ticket and seat reservation for bus operators called e-travel.
Spearheaded by Velasco and Prof. Marlo Novino, two other teams from the Institute were finalists in the competition, namely: Team Bashpal (Diofel Pallega, Aiya Jobelle Quinones and Misshell Pearl Arboladura) for their online venues reservation system called Bashpal; Team Laagan (Raphael Jose Balonga, Joren Ezra Apal and Constantino Brasileno) for their loyalty program and frequency incentive marketing application for businesses called Urb.
The winning teams were awarded with $27,000 worth of services from Microsoft and a slot at the Microsoft BizPark, prizes from Huawei Technologies and Seed Investments up to one million pesos and Incubation and Acceleration programs from Ideaspace, Spring.ph, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Philippine Software Industry Association.
With the theme “Create disruptive technologies, solve real problems”, the Philippine Startup Challenge is an annual event hosted by the DOST-ICT Office with partners from different business accelerators and enterprises to boost startup awareness among young and aspiring technopreneurs across the archipelago. With their 2nd year in launching, the event had 108 entries.
Other winners were Teams e-basura and Farm2Ket, both from the University of Cebu-Main Campus.
With this achievement in the startup community and the establishment of MSU-IIT’s in-house technology business incubator that will be launched in 2016, MSU-IIT aims to be a center for innovationand technopreneurship in Mindanao.
