Hellokasyon Is the Platform for Those Who Want to Actually Experience the Philippines
The Naga-based social enterprise is taking urban Filipinos into the communities that never make it onto any tourism catalog.
by JV Ordoñez
Published on Mar 5, 2026
Harvard Innovation Lab semifinalist and Naga-born startup social enterprise HelloKasyon is carving out a space where urban Filipinos, especially those with an inordinate amount of idle time, can immerse in the unique industries and communities that rarely show up on conventional travel itineraries. These untapped communities in the heart of places like Naga need to reap the rewards of what they ought to be earning from Filipinos who genuinely want to strengthen indigenous products and industries.
This burgeoning vision all started when HelloKasyon's Chief Operations Officer Louievec Diane "Yani" Zoilo and Chief Visionary Officer Jason Keith Boñaga,Chief Experience Officer Hubert Senosin, Chief Marketing Officer Marian Cestina met as disaster responders and saw the need to bridge the massive gaps in financial and government support for local communities that needed a vehicle to bolster engagement.
The art of Abaca Stripping is among the many raw, unique experiences that HelloKasyon champions
The platform has only been around for a little over a year, with its pilot tourism trip taking place in February last year. Of course, with every startup or enterprise driven by a noble cause, funding is a perennial roadblock that requires resourcefulness to leap over.
"A lot of places are closing already because no one's going and they're not really marketed well. There's a lot of potential but there's not enough inventory," Zoilo told Esquire Philippines on the sidelines of the 100x open house event for new founders, noting that the folks at HelloKasyon painstakingly take inventory of these tourism spots one by one. "It takes money to go there. Right now we're trying to see the existing farms in the region because we saw that there are actually big ones. They have strawberries in Camarines Sur. But we don't see it yet. So we have to go to them."
She detailed a unique community of abaca farmers who were former NPA rebels now living on just P400 a day to support a typical family of four. This is what HelloKasyon is hell-bent on shedding light on.
"We're addressing urban professionals because a lot of them wanted to visit communities and do immersion tourism, but they don't know how to start and where to start," Zolio added.
What can you expect when you book a trip on the HelloKasyon platform? For starters, the money you put into the trip will directly fund local livelihoods and disaster resilience for the specific community you visit, channeled into a social impact fund for climate-vulnerable regions across Bicol. Think of them as hyperlocal experiences that also drive observable change in the communities that need it most.
Scenes from communities on the Caramoan islands
Passion Project Turned Mission
These social missions require a certain type of persistence to get things off the ground, and the Naga-based enterprise did just that by undergoing relentless grilling from the top dogs of venture capital investing in the Philippines.
The 100x program is a joint initiative spearheaded by founding fellows that include Kaya Founders Managing Partner and former Zalora Philippines CEO Paulo Campos and Ignite House of Innovation CEO Andre Yap. The people at HelloKasyon ran into seasoned tech investors and industry leaders such as Alimurung and AI infrastructure platform Noroot co-founder Christina Björnström, who had visited the provincial city to meet rising founders from the area, which isn't really the first place you think of when it comes to well-oiled tech accelerators.
HelloKasyon pitched their business model to the folks at 100x without even being fully ready, knowing well they would be getting grilled and forced to rethink their entire operation. But thanks to that eye-opening encounter, they went back to the drawing board, refined their model, and put their name in the hat of aspiring startups at the Harvard Innovation Lab Presidential Innovation Challenge, one of the most competitive university-based innovation programs in the world. Boñaga noted that they submitted an online pitch deck that used almost the same format and line of questioning as the 100x encounter that conditioned them to know their business inside and out.
They landed as semifinalists, nabbed a private investor, and are on track to officially join the 100x founders program on the heels of their recognition.
Björnström earlier said that places like Naga cannot be seen as backwater joints with nothing going on, but a melting pot of some of the country's most ambitious founders. She even claimed that one Naga firm was the "most efficiently and impressively run tech startup she has ever encountered," compared to even those from Silicon Valley and Europe.
"I think I'm comfortable enough to say that HelloKasyon is a social enterprise," said Boñaga, who is also a faculty member at the Asian Institute of Management where he teaches Disaster Risk and Crisis Management and other courses on microfinance. "We're not afraid of making money, but the reason we want to make money is to help these communities. Can we say that we're tired of spending money?"
The Path Forward for HelloKasyon
Tourists who got to try their hands at working with Abaca thanks to Hellokasyon
A tourism spot in Bicol centered on strawberry picking with local communities
A tourist strips Abaca with a local in Bicol
The potential for the platform is sky high with their recent moves and link ups with tech players with substantial resources. Understandably, HelloKasyon is still mainly marketed towards urban Filipinos.
The obvious next step is aiming to attract foreign tourists to contribute to national tourism and to fill in the gaps that the government may sometimes overlook. Boñaga noted that tourists from far away lands would surely pay top dollar for embedded experiences that are vastly different from their fast-paced urban lifestyles.
Both HelloKasyon leaders detailed their short-term goals this year: 1. a minimum of two thousand active users in the next six months and 2. ten percent of the income straight into the social impact fund.
"We will be the platform for all of these communities to highlight their tourism, their industry, their community," Boñaga said. "And ensuring that if and when a disaster strikes, or when climate change finally gets to them, they're prepared. That we've somehow helped them in some shape or form."
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