A Powerful Photo Shows Filipino Startup Superstars Hanging Out

You may not recognize some or all of them now, but believe us when we say this is an extraordinary photo featuring some extraordinary people. 

On Sunday (March 20), Great Deals founder Steve Sy uploaded this photo that shows him having dinner in a restaurant with four other men. Those men are all startup founders themselves: Roland Ros of Kumu, Luis Sia of Paymongo, Nichel Gaba of PDAX, and ER Rollan of Growsari.

“Startup founder meet-up,” Sy wrote. “Sharing our journey, and learnings, looking forward in helping our startup ecosystem.”

If you’re a follower of the startup industry in the Philippines, no doubt you know who these men are. But if you don’t here’s a quick rundown.

Sy, of course, is the founder and CEO of Great Deals, an end-to-end e-commerce enabler, solutions provider, and online distributor, which most recently closed a Series B funding that put its total private equity funding at about P2 billion. Last week, Great Deals was also named the fastest-growing company in Asia Pacific by the revered Financial Times, besting other companies from countries like South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, India, and Australia.

Ros is the co-founder and CEO of Kumu, a livestreaming and social networking platform that is one of the most downloaded apps in the country today. In October 2021, the company announced that it has completed a Series C round that took its overall funding to $100 million or over P5 billion. 

Along with Francis Plaza, Jaime Hing, and Edwin Lacierda, Luis Sia founded Paymongo, a payments processing startup. The company completed its Series B funding round last February with $31 million, bringing its total funding to just under $46 million (about P2.4 billion).

Nichel Gaba founded PDAX, a local exchange that allows users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, in 2018. Earlier this year, it announced the close of its Series B funding round with $50 million (about P2.56 billion).

Rollan, meanwhile, is the co-founder and CEO of Growsari, a service platform that helps retail stores digitally procure the goods that they sell to their customers. For its Series B round that it completed last June, the company raised and undisclosed amount that it says has brought its total funding to $30 million or about P1.46 billion. 

So you see, the four men in the photo represent some of the biggest and baddest names in the local startup industry.

That makes us wonder about the kind of topics discussed over dinner.