Filinvest venture fund to build up Philippines unicorns

MANILA, Philippines — The venture-building arm of Gotianun-led Filinvest Group is aiming to build more unicorns from the Philippines with a value of $1 billion over the next five to seven years.

F(DEV) managing director Xavier Marzan said that the corporate builder has set an ambitious goal to transform more startup into unicorns as it continues to ram up investments and incubations of new ventures.

“But more than simply ‘starting-up’ these new ventures, we want to rapidly bring them to a level of operational scale that is required to make a real impact. So we also view ourselves as a ‘scale-up factory’,” Marzan said

For F(DEV), building unicorn-level businesses would require a startup DNA with a venture capital mindset, as well as the strength of the parent company’s ecosystem.

“Kick-starting new ventures and growing them 20 or 100 times need a different breed of talent. Everyone needs to be fast, agile, creative, innovative and comfortable with ambiguity. Moreover, people should have an unrelenting focus on solving customer problems and prioritizing customer experiences,” Marzan added.

According to F(DEV), startup teams need autonomy but should not be totally detached from the rest of the group as they would require resources and support particularly when a start-up idea is being vetted.

It is also helping startups simplify their corporate processes, whether they be in commercial units, technology, human resources, legal or finance.

“Our goal is to eventually scale startups to a regional level. Many times, the problems and gaps facing us here in the Philippines are very similar to what other emerging markets are experiencing,” Marzan said.

F(Dev) intends to retain only a minority stake and bring in external venture capital investment to scale-up the companies once these are spun out of the group.

The Filinvest Group established by the late taipan Andrew Gotianun is engaged in a wide array of industries including banking, real estate, retail and food and beverage, hospitality, energy and agriculture.