Starting them young

Today, Aaron Jarveen Ho, Karlo Mortel, and Steven Alexis Ng return to the Ateneo de Manila University campus after an absence of close to two weeks. They represented the country in the first regional HSBC Young IT Entrepreneurs Awards, where they bagged one of the program’s two awards. Right after, they joined country winners from Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand on a University of Washington study tour.

"Our entry had a simple premise–that Filipinos are musically inclined. Take that to the next level and we have Filipinos working abroad who would be more than willing to legitimately access original Filipino music online for a fee slightly higher than a cellular phone ring tone download. We called our project, eMusikero," said Ng, a communications technology senior.

The eMusikero project bested 119 other teams in the Philippine finals held last March 9. Regionally, 664 teams joined this year’s contest.

Critical Mass

The HSBC Young IT Entrepreneurs Awards initially targeted Hong Kong-based university students when it was launched in 2000. Two years later, the bank’s Malaysian operation adopted the program, quickly followed by the Philippines in 2003 and by Thailand in 2004.

With the creation of a critical mass of student-generated projects last year, the bank brought together the country winners last June 16 to compete for two awards: the "Best of the Best", which was won by Hong Kong, and the "Best Presentation", which was given to the Philippines.

Aside from eMuskero, the other business plans in competition were a mobile phone identity to replace membership and discount cards (from Hong Kong); a biochip implant service to monitor key health indicators (from Malaysia), and a software system that matches consumer needs with specific products and services offered by companies (Thailand).

Opportunity

"The awards are designed to help today’s brightest students become tomorrow’s business leaders. It is designed to allow participants to acquire practical business knowledge, including business planning and presentation skills," said Vincent Cheng, chairman of Hong Kong-based The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. Ltd.

In the case of the Philippine team, its presentation before a panel of judges, which included Jollibee Foods Corp. president and chief executive officer Tony Tan Caktiong, was improved by Ateneo Department of Information Systems and Computer Sciences professor Joselito Olpoc.

"Creativity and managerial skills are the team’s strengths. In their presentation, they stressed the impact of the project in reducing music piracy, which is conservatively placed at 30% in the Philippines, " said Olpoc.

Viability is another strength, judging from the willingness of the Philippine Association of Records Industry to work with the eMuskero team.

"Being a third party, we would not be limited to selling OPMs produced by a single recording company. We can sell music produced by all PARI members. We can drive up their sales, initially in North America, where the Filipino-American community is largely made up of professionals," said Ho, a senior in legal management who intends to take up law after graduation.

Even before, the regional competition held in Hong Kong, a technology-focused company was already in talks with the eMusikero team to give bones to the online music project.

"It was only after we won the national finals that we asked for the help of our professors. One of the things that they pointed out (which we couldn’t change anymore when we made our presentation in Hong Kong) was that our financials could not possibly support our marketing plan. We’re working on that right now," said Mortel, a senior in business management, who has joined a three-semester business acceleration program that started last summer.

Today, the three Ateneans are more convinced than ever that their eMusikero project has a corporate life of its own after the 2004-2005 HSBC Young IT Entrepreneurs Awards.