Business
Planning 101
College
seniors from four schools crossed swords to present what they believed
were workable business ideas in a contest sponsored by the Manila Jaycees.
Practical but not necessarily cutting-edge ideas dominated the 1st Philippine Young Entrepreneurs Best Business Plan Competition organized by the Manila Jaycees this year, when college seniors from the Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University, Thames International Business School, and the University of San Carlos put their best strategies forward in an attempt to get ahead of the field. Seniors from Ateneo proposed a snacks manufacturing firm that would compete with the heavy hitters. Another group from the same school suggested a TV show that would demonstrate the Filipinos' talent for animation, while a student from Thames raised a farming concept that would help ease poverty in his home province. A graduate student from De La Salle placed her bet on a tutorial service for the Filipino-Chinese community.
"They're okay in terms of the quality of preparing [the business plans]," says Marfred Pranada, overall chairman, who has judged similar contests in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore. He has patterned the Philippine challenge after the Junior Chamber International Best Business Plan of the World Competition. "I thought of implementing the contest in the national level," he says, adding the winners would represent the Philippines in the world competition to be held this month in Fukuoka, Japan.
But while the quality of the business plans entered in the contest are at par with those suggested in other countries, there is much to be desired in the scale of the businesses that the Filipinos have suggested. In other JCI competitions, a group of young Taiwanese proposed creating a new microchip manufacturing facility, while Malaysian students wrote a business plan for a golf reservation portal on the Internet. "We have a long way to go," says Pranada. "You see the foreign students thinking big, thinking much about entrepreneurship," he adds.
Snack
food manufacturing
Universal Robina Corp., General Milling, Liwayway Marketing, and Stateline Snack Foods dominate the Philippine snack food market worth $ 81.8 million, but Ateneo de Manila students Dyan Hermogenes, Doris Ngo, and Ryan Ybañez say a start-up company like theirs could very well grab market share from these behemoths. "The idea came from me," says Ybañez, 21, whose group won first prize in the contest, pushing soya-based chips with a long shelf life.
The three have consulted specialists from the Department of Science and Technology about their production processes because "We don't have any background in food technology," explains Hermogenes, 20. They relied on the department's staff to help them create a recipe for the chips, and on family and friends to get their company, Tree Soya House Inc., up and running. (Ngo's dad, who owns a tofu factory in Pampanga, provided them with the raw materials for product development, while The French Baker's Jonhlu Koa advised them on starting their food concern.)
"We're doing niche marketing," says Ybañez. He and his buddies plan to sell their products as a healthy snack under the brand name Soy Bites to gyms, spas, and specialty stores.
Vegetable farming
Christian Albert Guerrero was one semester short of graduating with a degree in agricultural business management from the University of the Philippines-Los Baños when he moved to the Thames International Business School, where he has one goal in mind when he wrote a business plan for Xtal Farms: to rescue poor farmers of Zambales from poverty by teaching them modern farming methods. Now, he wants to build a model farm and a distribution system in every town there under a franchising system where he'll take small farmers under his wing. He wants to teach them modern farming techniques, provide them with some capital, teach them management, and help market their produce all over the province.
"My plan after graduation is to go to the province and work with the farmers there," says 27 year-old Guerrero. He has recently started a 3.8-hectare model farm in Zambales to raise bitter melon, Chinese spinach. Coconut, corn, yam, ginger, lettuce, squash, and string beans with help from former UP classmate Pamela Narido.
TV Animation
Ateneo students Melecio Martin Arranz, Roberto Antonio Crisostomo, Robert Raymond Cruz, Patrick Gerome Montes, Josephine Ong, and Diana Christine Tan want the country to be known for producing excellent cartoon shows on TV, hence their proposal to produce Sick Sense, an animation series featuring the lives of mental patients. "We really want to improve the animation industry in the Philippines," says Crisostomo. "The Philippines is known for its animators but not for in-house productions," he adds.
According to the group's business plan, Sick Sense "would lead to the country being being seen not only as a place to hire labor from but also as a source of viable and marketable concepts and ideas."
Chinese Tutorials
Joy Rabo sees a business opportunity in the Filipino-Chinese community's mission to preserve its heritage. In her business plan for Tutor Me, she envisions a program that would raise students' English and Chinese language skills and make them more aware of their culture. "Even primary schools for Chinese-Filipinos are struggling to improve their Chinese language programs and curriculum to uphold the Chinese culture," says Rabo, 24. She estimates that ethnic Chinese comprise 1.2 to 1.5 percent of the Philippine population with half of them living in Metro Manila.
Tutor Me plans to offer home-based and center-based services in both English and Chinese. The biggest tutorial companies now are MSA Math Tutoring Center, Ahead Tutorial and Review Center, and Kumon Philippines, Inc. but none of them offers Chinese lessons. "The direct competitors of the company will be limited to freelance tutors," says Rabo who plans to hire many tutors that clients could choose from.