Hygiene products manufacturer Sanitary Care Products Asia (SCPA), through its partnership with the Asian Institute of Management-Dado Banatao Incubator (AIM-DBI) announced the three winners in its social accelerator program called Human Investment x impact Grant for Entrepreneurship and Empowerment or HIIGENE.
HIIGENE is a search that will provide opportunities to deserving start-ups to accelerate Filipino businesses. Through this program, AIM-DBI emphasizes people management philosophy as their top criterion, fully integrating SCPA’s DNA program. It will be anchored in the Sio family’s legacy of a people-first philosophy, inspiring entrepreneurs to put up a trailblazing company built on their peoples’ loyalty, trust, and respect.
Qualified startups from the AIM-DBI pool went through a rigorous selection process led by SCPA executives, members of the academe, and the corporate industry. Eleven startups presented their innovations, purpose, and their future plans through a pitch presentation before they were trimmed down into five finalists.
The selection committee admitted that choosing from these five was such a challenging task for they have all proven themselves worthy of the grant. That is why during the awards ceremony last June 24, not just one but three of the startups emerged victorious. SCPA chairman and founder Renato Sio and CEO Ven Sio presented the three winners, namely Payruler, a human resource management startup; Eskwelabs, an edu-tech startup for data skills education, and Mayani, an agri-technology platform.
Payruler is a comprehensive and customizable Human Resource Management System built for Philippine businesses. It is an end-to-end solution that automates, integrates, and streamlines HR processes that cover the entire employee commercial lifecycle from hiring to retiring.
Eskwelabs, founded in 2019, is a Manila-based online data upskilling school with the mission of driving social mobility in the future of work through data skills education.
Mayani is currently the Philippines’ fastest growing impact-driven, agri-technology platform that connects rural smallholder farmers and consumers, both retail and commercial. They envision a Philippines where over 10-million smallholder farmers lead better lives through technology.
Equity-free cash grants of up to PhP500,000 each were awarded to the three startups-winners to help expand and sustain their companies. In addition, they will participate in a six-session mentorship program with SCPA executives from July to September. The HIIGENE curriculum features enrichment topics based on real-life experiences such as establishing the business purpose, strategies, operations, finance, sales and marketing, and people management to inspire their organization’s practices.
Updates on the progress and achievements of the three winners will be monitored by the AIM-DBI milestone monitoring program. These will be presented during the culminating SCPA’s silver anniversary celebration, which will take place in October.
