DOST Secretary Dr. Renato U. Solidum, Jr. and TAPI Director Atty. Marion Ivy D. Decena in photograph snapped by SDN.
Short link: https://wp.me/paaccn-10NJ
HILTON MANILA, Newport Resorts World, Pasay City (SDN) — Many Filipinos may not be aware of the vital role that startups play in the economy of the Philippines.
According to an artificial intelligence (AI) Overview, startups are “newly formed companies designed to grow fast” which usually are focused on solving a problem leveraging on “a new or tech-focused idea”.
Government agencies in the country, such as the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) currently headed by Secretary Dr. Renato U. Solidum, Jr. and its 18 attached agencies, have been at the forefront in helping these fledgling companies make their start, nurture, provide funding, and monitor their development.
The Technology Application and Promotion Institute (TAPI) under the leadership of Director Atty. Marion Ivy D. Decena, CESO III, is one these DOST attached agencies helping in many ways the local startups.
All it takes is a single spark for startups to flourish
Today, Monday, Director Decena led TAPI’s conference here dubbed “2026 Lunduyan x Tech Summit Culminating Activity” which converged stakeholders, partners, and opportunities.
TAPI described the conference as a premier event showcasing “the milestone achievements, breakthrough commercialization pathways, and real-world impacts of Filipino innovators and technology champions under DOST-TAPI’s specialized programs.”
Decena thanked attendees at the day-long event that gathered startups and their founders, tech-based entrepreneurs, Filipino inventors, and local and international speakers.
Speaking of milestone which startups have achieved in the country, Decena cited how these tech-focused comapnies are born.
“When we speak of opportunities, we must recognize where they originate. Every local technology begins as a single spark, an idea born from Filipino problem-solving,” the TAPI director points out.
With many single sparks growing into many startups, Decena noted that they now “represent a pillar of our economy”.
She was referring to Gobi Partners’ Philippine Startup Ecosystem Report 2026 that found out that “our local startups now contribute an estimated 3% to our nominal gross domestic product (GDP) and have generated close to 200,000 jobs nationwide.”
On the other hand, she indicated that actualizing these innovations from the laboratory to commercial scale that can be sustained onward “demands both ingenuity and strategic capital.”
She impressed upon the starups and their founders that securing capital is not that easy, emphasizing that to secure capital they have to navigate a challenging reality.
“We are currently operating in a discerning global market. As highlighted in that same report (of Gobi Partners), following the funding cooldown in 2025, where total capital raised by Philippine startups contracted by 32%, we have seen a shift in investor behavior,” Decena points out.
TAPI’s 2026 Lunduyan summit deep-dived into “human-centered innovation development and science communication”.
SDN – SciTech & Digital News asked “PathBuilder“, one of the startups at the tech summit which is focused on education, brought in by its founder and CEO John Andrew Mañacop, to share his views about his company and the local startup community.
“We believe in a simple but powerful truth: A progressive country is an educated country. This core belief is the entire reason PathBuilder exists, and it drives everything we do,” says Mañacop.
A government-backed education technology company, and Filipino-built, PathBuilder, he explained, is an artificial intelligence (AI)-native platform built from the ground up to understand how each student learns.
The PathBuilder founder said his company was born during the global pandemic that practically shut the world down to a standstill for around three years.
Mañacop’s company is providing solution to problems that lack of classrooms impacting learning as well as teachers’ ability to impart knowledge to their students, calling this a “systemic issue” that needs to be solved.
“In a traditional classroom, students who fall behind do so often quietly. They are carried along by the average class until the gaps in their knowledge become to wide to bridge. To ensure quality education, learning must be met at the level of the individual,” CEO Mañacop points out.
PathBuilder’s education-focused solution appear to be gaining traction judging from the increasing number of clients.
“Today, our technology serves 28 educational institutions and empowers roughly 100,000 students. The impact of llocal innovation is clear in the outcome. Our partner institutions post licensure passing rates of about 90 percent, well above the national average of 38 percent, and have produced around 250 board exam topnotchers,” he says, obviously elated.
Not only is PathBuilder gaining wide notice in the national scene, it’s also gaining traction in the international arena.
“This impact has not gone unnoticed. Our research was peer-reviewed and accepted at ACL 2026 in San Diego, California, a top-tier international conference, reporting a 37.9 percentage point mean learning gain among our users,” he proudly says.
The company’s overseas reputation includes being an Innovation Awardee of United Kingdom’s Royal Academy of Engineering LIF Global 2026 programme, a KPMG Philippines Global Tech Innovator Finalist, as well as having represented the Philippines in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-Korea International Competitions.
Mañacop cited what he dubbed “immense pride in seeing a Filipino-grown innovation” become “known and validated both at home and abroad”.
He did not fail to cite government’s important role in helping startups develop and grow, saying it’s a ” catalyst”.
PathBuilder has the Philippine Council on Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development (PCIEERD), the DOST’s Innovation Council, to thank for its crucial backing through its Startup Grant Fund (SGF).
In essence, Mañacop said private capital alone is not enough for a startup to thrive; government backing is needed.
“That support allowed us to run the studies, build the engine, train over 100 faculty members, and validate our technology across dozens of partner institutions long before a single private investor looked our way.”
As PathBuilder transitions from validation to exponential growth, Decena’s TAPI awarded the company the Expanded Venture Financing Program (EVFP), a big support for the PCIEERD SGF-supported startup.
He said the TAPI EVFP provides direct support to PathBuilder’s commercialization, saying the two government agencies’ support preserve the company’s all-Filipino identity free of foreign colors.
As PathBuilder’s science passed the test, and the outcomes documented, he reported an overwhelming demand for its tech offerings.
“We currently hold 71 signed university pilot partnerships covering close to half a million students. Our honest constraint today is simply capacity to convert these pilots into full deployments at the rapid pace our educational partners are requesting,” he says of what might be the company’s welcome problem.
Startups like PathBuilder can count on TAPI’s continued support.
“Our support continues well after today’s program concludes. To ensure our innovators remain competitive in this investment climate, DOST-TAPI is currently preparing an active investment portfolio,” Decena assures.– EDD K. USMAN (√)
_________
Not: This story stands to receive update for more details, or information.