Startups can solve common problems in the country, businesswoman says

(Photo grabbed from UP Association of Business Administration Majors (UP ABAM)’s Facebook account)

A young businesswoman urged students on Wednesday, Oct. 25, to help, support and build startups, a trendy, fast and good solution that would address the common problems in the country.

Natasha Bautista, the Operations Head of QBO Innovation Hub Philippines, said that just like how Grab Philippines disrupted the transportation industry, local startups could quickly provide solutions to great problems in the country.

A startup is “a potential high scalable project, working to solve a problem where the solution is not obvious,” Bautista explained during the Spark Series Campus Caravan held at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

“Startups are very quick to our feet. We are [also] able to tap a lot of people in a very limited amount of time because of the tech solution... There are a lot of already proven solutions that helped the government, [such as] Grab and Uber...helping the transportation industry,” Bautista said in an interview with the Dapitan Post.

According to Bautista, a startup is a project that is yet to be a company if it becomes successful.

“You can actually have your own startup while you're in school [but] you can never be a startup forever. For startups, you [either] become a company, you perish or you pivot,” she said.

She also said that the next generation of business leaders’ “go-getter attitude” millennials would change the traditional workplace to a more flexible one that could easily adapt to trends. Due to technology, specifically the internet, a startup’s growth is exponential with an average monthly growth of about 100% to 150%, compared to traditional business with an annual growth of about 10%, Bautista stated.

Despite lack of support for startups outside the startup community, Bautista said there were promising startups emerging in the country which were solving real problems and even the government was already supporting the ecosystem.

“The government is already providing a ton of help but siyempre puwede pa madagdagan. Our partner in DOST (Department of Science and Technology) is helping give grounds to a lot of our startups,” she said.

The campus caravan visits universities in NCR to bring industry experts and entrepreneurs share their expertise to students through seminars.