The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) of the Philippines is creating a P250-million (US$50 million) venture fund aimed at investing in local startups, as per a report by BusinessMirror.
The fund is line with the Innovative Startup Act 2019 and is aimed at supporting product research and development, product manufacturing, sales and marketing of startups.
Although the draft guidelines are yet to be finalised, the venture fund aims to provide equity financing.
According to Rafaelita M. Aldaba, Trade undersecretary for competitiveness and innovation, the fund may provide between P5 million and P25 million (US$100,000 and US$500,000) to each startup, which means five to ten startups are likely to receive funding.
On Monday, Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez informed that the money for the programme was included in the budget during its meeting with the National Development Company (NDC) last week.
“Although we were affected by the pandemic and there was a bit of difficulty in completing the process, nevertheless, it is in our agenda for this year and hopefully we will be able to launch that venture fund to be managed by NDC,” Lopez said.
Currently, DTI is working on another initiative, called Startup Business One-Stop Shop, which intends to facilitate end-to-end registration of startups, in addition to serving as a portal keeping startup-related information.
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