DTI Explores Collaboration, Startup Partnerships With Brampton, Canada Innovation District

MANILA – The Department of Trade and Industry – Competitiveness Bureau (DTI-CB) and the Philippine Trade and Investment Center-Toronto (PTIC-Toronto), held an online forum with the Brampton Innovation District of Canada last 29 July 2021. The event aims to promote the shared objective of exploring opportunities for collaboration and partnerships to foster innovation and technology in the development of the startup ecosystem.

Philippine Consul General Orontes Castro, who welcomed the participants, highlighted the parallelism between Brampton’s initiatives and Philippines’ “ten-point socioeconomic agenda, which aims, among others, for an increase in Philippines’ competitiveness and the promotion of technology for the enhancement of Philippine innovation and creative capacity.” The forum featured representatives from the BHive Program, which offers incentives to incoming foreign startups and entrepreneurs with the tools, resources, and space to establish and scale up their businesses in Canada, and the Ryerson Venture Zone, which is a new and pre-seed incubator located in the Ryerson University in Brampton. 

QBO Innovation Hub and Ideaspace Executive Director Katrina Chan, Launchgarage Co-Founder Jojo Flores, and DTI-CB’s Karl Pacolor also shared the initiatives of both the public and private sectors in promoting the Philippine startup ecosystem. To show the success of these initiatives, Aldrich Tan of CXO of Nextpay Philippines, an all-in-one banking solution for MSMEs, presented their success story in the Philippines.

Tan and his co-Founder Don Pansacola, both Filipino-Canadians, launched Nextpay in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic to help MSMEs and their employees manage their finances more efficiently. A day before the forum, Nextpay announced that they successfully raised USD1.6M of seed funding from various investors, including Golden Gate Ventures and the Gentree Fund of the Sy family.

In photo from L-R: STR Maria Roseni Alvero, Karl Pacolor, Usha Srinivasan
Peaches Madarang-Cesario, Kristen Ferkranus, Andrea Williams
Katrina Chan and Jojo Flores

To wrap up the program, Senior Trade Commissioner Maria Roseni Alvero emphasized that “learning about each other’s startup ecosystems and landscapes is the foundation for strategic alliances, collaborations, and partnerships aimed towards the growth of our respective startup and innovation communities.” She also encouraged Canadians to continue being curious about what the Philippines has to offer for their businesses. 

The forum is the first leg of a two-part event and will be followed by a business matching session between Philippine and Canadian startups in the coming month.