UP Cebu graduates develop gamified platform Codetoki

MANILA, Philippines - Founded by two young developers from the University of the Philippines (UP) Cebu, Codetoki aims to beef up the quality of the Philippine computer science and information technology (IT) talent supply.

Codetoki is a gamified platform that matches jobseekers with suitable employers based on points earned through coding challenges. It promises to transform the way aspiring coders learn and showcase their talent.

According to Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA) president Joey Gurango, the local software industry has grown rapidly with $1.16 billion export revenues by the end of 2012. However, it will continue to experience challenges in the talent supply.
“Ideally, Codetoki will bridge the gap between what the industry needs and what the academe produces,” says Codetoki co-founder Honeylyn Balingcasag, a management graduate from UP Cebu.

“Codetoki aims to help fresh graduates with no industry experience hone their skills and showcase their potential to companies. It will also ease the companies’ pain in their search for qualified applicants,” she adds.

Multi-awarded platform

Prior to Codetoki, Balingcasag and her co-founder Ademar Tutor, a computer science graduate, founded a Ruby on Rails (programming application) development and design shop called Bootyard.

Codetoki’s first founding team member, Donna Limoran, a fresh management graduate also from UP Cebu, had been their intern. They were part of the team that worked together to pitch the idea of Codetoki during the first “Startup Weekend in Cebu,” which was a weekend dedicated to pitching ideas, forming teams and starting companies held in May 2012. They placed third and won the Best in Social Enterprise App award.

The Codetoki team then joined competitions to validate their product idea. They received first place in AppBridge, an initiative of the World Economic Forum and the Forum of Young Global Leaders in 2012.

Codetoki also won first place in AppsForAsia, a competition sponsored by Microsoft and Asian Development Bank which allowed the power duo to exhibit Codetoki during ADB’s 46th Annual Meeting in New Delhi, India last May.

“We are grateful to PSIA and their SPrInG.PH program where we received valuable mentorship from experienced technopreneurs,” says Balingcasag of the startup incubation program.

SPrInG.PH or the Software Products Incubation Group is a project of PSIA that began in August 2011, which mentors startups like Codetoki on how to succeed.

“With their help, we were able to exhibit at the SoftCon (Philippine Software Industry Conference) last October and create awareness for our product,” says Balingcasag.

Codetoki does not only enable coders to build their portfolio online, but its gaming aspect makes it more fun for them to refine their expertise. The platform is open to anyone who wants to learn Ruby, PHP or Javascript.

“We want to send a message to students to keep learning because the opportunities available are grand. There are resources like Codetoki available online and mostly for free. The basic knowledge of programming can be self-learned. What they need is the right attitude to take control of their careers,” says Balingcasag.

A part of the co-founders’ future goals is to be able to offer Codetoki to countries that experience the same problem of employability among fresh graduates as the Philippines. Breaking barriers by providing young developers with a fun and free platform to nurture their programming skills, Codetoki has great potential to set standards in the global software industry. Still, Codetoki’s main focus will still be strengthening the Philippines’ talent pool.

In 2012, the IT outsourcing and software development sector employed 57,078 Filipinos according to data from the PSIA, a partner association of the Information Technology and Business Process Association of the Philippines.