Millennials pitch ideas on disaster risk reduction

We’ve seen it too many times on the news.

A typhoon hits a small town in the province. You see the roads, littered with uprooted trees, light posts, and furniture flushed out by the flood.

There is always that quick shot of a roofless home, the windows shattered, and the door hanging on its hinges. Then there’s the family interview, their faces battered and made weary by the storm.

Following the news, there is often a special commercial that calls for volunteerism and sympathy. Volunteers, even without any experience in disaster management, go to warehouses to help pack food, among other forms of help. Everyone is doing something.

Now, startup companies also want to take part.

In September, more than 130 startup companies pitched their business ideas in a competition that is searching for innovative ideas to better help the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in times before, during, and after disasters.

The three-week search has narrowed the list to 20 startup companies engaged in diverse business activities such as communication, education, and even fashion. These companies are not social enterprises. They are firms who think their business model could also be used in times of crisis, even if this was not its initial purpose.

Such ideas run along the same vein as Facebook’s Safety Check feature.

The social networking company is not a social enterprise. However, it activates the Safety Check feature in times of man-made or natural disasters. It was even activated in the Philippines last year following an explosion in Davao City.

“The idea is we could harness the millennials so they could come up with innovative ideas in the areas of disaster risk reduction, response, and recovery,” Butch Meily, QBO president, told the Inquirer in a recent interview.

QBO Innovation Hub (QBO), in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation (PDRF), is holding this competition, which they hope could usher in new solutions to time-old disasters.

QBO is the country’s first public-private initiative for startups, created through a partnership among IdeaSpace, J.P. Morgan, Department of Science and Technology and the Department of Trade and Industry.

Aptly so, the competition —which Meily said was the first of its kind in the world— is named “Startups to the Resque,” the spelling of the last word taken after the same wit that derived QBO from the traditional kubo.

The 20 companies will showcase their platforms at Slingshot Asean 2017, an event expected to attract the interest of over a thousand visitors on Oct. 20 at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC).

They were selected based on the creativity, scalability, and feasibility of their ideas.

The top six finalists get to pitch their business models on stage, but only three will be selected winners.

According to QBO, the first prize winner will receive $10,000 as well as an opportunity to work with the UNDP and deploy its solutions with PDRF, one of the world’s leading private sector disaster resilience consortia comprised of the Philippines’ top corporations.

The second and third prize winners will receive $4,000 and $2,000, respectively.

“It doesn’t end with the prize money. But the real big win, in my opinion, is when they get a real contract to deploy these solutions after this contest is over,” Katrina R. Chan, QBO Executive Director, told the Inquirer.

The startups, with their respective business pitches, will be seen this week.

Most of them are Filipino companies, while only four are from other Asean countries, namely: Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia.

“It’s not all apps (mobile applications). I think there’s a common misconception that when we talk about startups, it’s all about apps,” she said, hinting at the diversity of the 20 companies that have been selected for this week’s event.

“Startups always say they want to change the world. But if it’s a serious problem, would you still want to do so? That’s the challenge here,” she said.

Here are the names of the top 20 start-up firms selected for the upcoming competition:

ChatbotPH

After Effect

Skyeye Analytics, Inc.

Gavagives

LifeMesh

Ascendant Technologies, Inc.

Senti

Tralulu

StyleGenie PH

Cropital

Timba

billionBricks

ServeHappy Jobs

Pushkart.ph

UPROOT Aquaponics

Blogapalooza

Haraya

Frontlearners, Inc.

Go Gridless Philippines Corp

Unomap