Over the last four months, the Philippines has had increasingly longer work-from-home experiments – first for a day or two with Typhoon Kammuri in late November, next for a few days due to the eruption of Taal Volcano on January 12, and now for at least a month with the lockdown from COVID-19.
Many local startups and tech companies have been caught flat-footed, especially with the current lockdown. Like in Malaysia, there are companies that have business models that go directly against the recommendation for social distancing and strict quarantining, such as travel and hospitality.
The greater majority of startups and tech companies in the Philippines can still operate in the lockdown but are still adjusting to the nuances of moving from in-person to fully remote work in such a short span of time.
Many analysts are in fact predicting an economic downturn as businesses get acclaimed to a world struck with a pandemic, even possibly a reduction of M&A activity in Southeast Asia.
Surprisingly, there are a few tech companies in the country not only surviving but thriving in the midst of the current lockdown.
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They are worth studying because their use cases point to examples of how businesses in the Philippines and across Southeast Asia can potentially become more impactful and integral to the lives of their users.
Basic needs go on-demand
When the community quarantine took into effect in Manila on March 15, few people were prepared. As in other countries, there were absurdly long lines at groceries as people stocked up – or in some unfortunate cases, hoarded – essentials such as food, water, and sanitation items. But not everyone was able to get what they need.
Many Filipinos have since turned to the on-demand services platform, MyKuya.
According to founder Shahab Shabibi, MyKuya has seen triple the requests compared to the week before, with many people turning to the app for help with basic needs, such as getting a kuya (Filipino for “big brother”) to help deliver take-out or do personal shopping for necessities such as sanitation items.
Employed through MyKuya’s enterprise partners, these kuyas are themselves working completely voluntarily. For many Filipinos at the bottom-of-the-pyramid, the economic impact of not working during the COVID-19 lockdown – “no work, no pay” is a commonly heard refrain – is the worst part of the pandemic.
Many of the new kuyas are workers whose work will be shut down for the next month, or who have even already been laid off.
Shabibi feels that taking in this new surge of kuyas through their enterprise partners is in line with their overall mission.
“It’s unfortunate that it had to happen this way, but this story is directly in line with MyKuya’s aims to create jobs for millions of Filipinos. With the values of bayanihan (communal unity) and nation-building in mind, we’ve always been about creating real livelihood opportunities for people here in the Philippines. It’s actually our goal to create one million jobs by 2022,” says Shabibi.
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Work-from-home evolves
Apart from occasionally slow internet (depending on their internet service provider), most Filipino workers do have the tools and resources to successfully work-from-home. Their company probably has a messaging platform, a workflow system, and other industry-specific digital tools.
While these Filipino companies may provide their employees with a robust productivity stack, their offerings in learning and development are almost nonexistent.
Filipino culture prizes face-to-face interaction, which is why the vast majority of education and upskilling in corporations and universities is still done in-person.
Local tech company CloudSwyft is giving Filipinos the opportunity to continue their professional growth remotely.
The company provides a cloud-based, technology learning platform built around online courses and technology learning labs that provides instruction in everything from data science and machine learning to Azure and Power BI.
While CloudSwyft has a regional footprint – the company counts clients and partners in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Australia – founder Dann Angelo De Guzman is especially proud that the remote learning their platform enables is needed more than ever for Filipino workers and students.
“Coming from a humble background right here in Manila, I’ve personally experienced how digital upskilling can improve your life. I’m excited to offer more of these opportunities to millions of people across ASEAN, who can now learn the skills in most demand by the best employers across the globe, right from the comfort and safety of their own home,” says De Guzman, who added that a portion of revenues from their platform subscriptions for the rest of the year will be donated to the Philippine General Hospital, Lung Center of the Philippines, and the Ayala Foundation.
Betting on the future
In anticipation of the potential recession due to COVID-19, more Filipinos will be looking to make long-term investments that will steward their financial health well into the future.
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As a matriarchal society, many of these investment decisions will be made by women, as data from investment platform eToro has shown – the Philippines has the highest proportion of female investors in the entire world.
eToro has over 12 million users across the world, only 13 per cent of whom are women. In sharp contrast, the proportion of women investors in the Philippines is 26 per cent, or double that of the global average.
“Filipina traders are shattering gender stereotypes with their active participation in the investment scene, proving that investing is a viable path for economic mobility,” says Paul Familiaran, Head of Southeast Asia Business for eToro.
“We are optimistic about the sustained upward trend in the number of registered female traders in the coming years, especially since more women joined the ranks of Popular Investors on the eToro platform.”
One hopes that the absolute number for both female and male investors on eToro will continue to rise.
As COVID-19 lockdown shrouds our future with uncertainty, it becomes increasingly important to invest in assets that have a long-term horizon and are more protected from the threats that brick-and-mortar businesses and in-person work face.
In much the same vein, entrepreneurs and founders should take this as a lesson for themselves: It’s now high time to search for new ways to create value.
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