Manila ranked among the world’s top 40 emerging startup ecosystems, a report showed, although the cities in neighboring Southeast Asian nations Indonesia and Malaysia placed closer to the top of the list.
Manila ranked 31-40, reaching a tie with 9 other cities such as Houston in the United States and Xiamen in China, according to this year’s Global Startup Ecosystem Report (GSER).
The GSER is the world’s most comprehensive and widely read research on startups. It is done by Startup Genome, a world-leading policy advisory and research organization for governments and public-private partnerships that want to grow their startup ecosystems.
The 2020 report included for the first time a list of the top 100 emerging startup ecosystems, which it tagged as “the next 100 ecosystems after the top ones.”
The top five global startup ecosystems remained the same, with Silicon Valley ranking first, followed by a tie between New York and London, and then Beijing and finally Boston.
To come up with the ranking for emerging ecosystems, the report used a weighted average based on performance, funding, market reach as well as experience and talent.
While Manila placed high in this list of emerging startup ecosystems, Indonesia’s Jakarta ranked 2nd and Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur ranked 11th.
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said in a press statement on Friday that Manila actually ranked 36th in the list, although the report never specified the actual ranking since it tied with several other cities.
“The proliferation of fintech and e-commerce startups in the country is a testament to the abundance of opportunities in the Philippine market,” said Trade and Industry Undersecretary for Competitiveness and Innovation Rafaelita Aldaba. The report cited fintech and e-commerce as Manila’s sub-sector strengths.
The ecosystem in Manila is in an activation phase, which is the first phase in developing a startup ecosystem, followed by globalization, attraction and integration, according to the report.
In an activation phase, there is a “limited startup experience” and around 1,000 or fewer startups. The ecosystem in Manila has a value of $1.6 billion, the report said, which was significantly lower than the $10.5-billion global average.
Fintech firms make up 15 percent of startups in Manila. The transaction value of the fintech market here reached $10 billion last year.