TWO Filipinas who founded innovative start-ups will participate in this year’s DLD Tel Aviv Innovation Festival, Israel’s largest international hi-tech gathering.
The Filipina start-up founders are May Montero, cofounder of Tambio, a technology that makes raffle joining easy and fun; and Geraldine Anne Therese Palma-Arboleda, chief operating officer of Taxumo, an intelligent Web and mobile application that helps people compute and pay their taxes.
Tambio is an all-in-one raffle solution that includes real-time analytics of relevant data, such as actual sales, ticket redemptions per location and customer demographics. It is currently deployed in eight malls in Metro Manila and had processed over a billion worth of sales for a mall operator.
Taxumo is a tax-compliance application that helps small- and medium-sized businesses, professionals and accountants optimize their tax work flow through the generation of automatic tax forms and statements, direct submission of tax forms to the government and application of best tax practices.
Palma-Arboleda said many Filipino entrepreneurs wanted to pay their taxes but find it very difficult to follow the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s (BIR) convoluted forms.
She said Taxumo would also be a great help to navigate the BIR labyrinthine procedures for doctors, engineers, lawyers and freelancers.
The duo were guests, along with scores of tech-savvy entrepreneurs at Israeli Ambassador Effie Ben Matityau’s residence in Makati City, where he announced that the two Filipina start-up founders will represent the Philippines in the gathering of the best start-ups and future trailblazers in Tel Aviv.
Matityau said there would be about 1,000 participants in the Young Entrepreneurs Society Start-up Summit.
“I am sorry to say but there will be gender bias, all participants are women for competition and enriched environment,” Matityau said, while adding that he is 100-percent sure that the two Filipino moms and entrepreneurs will win.
“But it will be more than winning because they will be around entrepreneurs and be able to share their start-up experience.”
This is the second time that the Philippines will participate in DLD Tel Aviv Innovation Festival, which will end on September 29.
The Philippine start-up founders will be able to present their innovative ideas to industry leaders who may help move the idea to implementation, commercialization and recognition.
DLD brings together venture capital funds, investors, inventors and leaders who are the foundations of the hi-tech industry.
“The start-up ecosystem created in Israel presents opportunities for partnerships in the international level. Considering the Philippines’s aspiration, its participation in this international gathering and, in general, the growing cooperation in the field of technology will add to its capacity in the hi-tech arena,” Matityau said.
This year the representatives are from the IdeaSpace Foundation.