In the recently held Alibaba GET Global Challenge 2020, Filipino trio Michael Kakumoto, Ariel Silva, Jr., and Jann Skyler Teng, graduate students in Innovation and Business at the Asian Institute of Management, and co-founders of company Symlify, won third in the competition.
Seeing the grave impact of the pandemic to micro, small and medium businesses, the three entrepreneurs came together and worked towards establishing Symlify, an order management system designed for small business owners that depend on social media.
Jann Skyler Teng, Symlify UX and Design Head, explained how they saw the Philippine retail market completely evolve with more and more businesses pivoting online to cater to the needs of consumer that have been shopping online most especially during the onset of the pandemic.
“We wanted to support these social sellers in the pandemic, helping them reach more customers, organizing their data and simplifying their process,” said Teng. Prior to Symlify, the three co-founders used their experiences in building this unified order management tool for MSMEs as they realized the opportunities that technology presented to transform and empower business owners.
“In my job, I was already engaged in helping organizations digitize or manage their technology risks. I guess I felt that I could apply the concepts I use in consulting through my own entrepreneurship,” said Michael Kakumoto, Head of Business Development and Strategy.
Figuring out which product to build for MSMEs wasn’t an easy feat for these three, but their goal of building a tool for business owners was their main driving force. Thus, Symlify, was born to become a digital tool that empowers Filipino Social Sellers and soon Social Sellers across Southeast Asia.
With the Philippine startup scene patterned after the Silicon Valley model, Mike, Ariel, and Sky joined by two of their classmates Carlo Tansuk (Process Engineer), and Florentino Gonzalez IV (SEO Consultant), wanted to learn more about the approach and nuances of Chinese startups, as well as test their product idea with various stakeholders. This led the team to participate in Alibaba’s GET Global Challenge 2020 which aims to create solutions that can be used during this pandemic and help businesses generate a sustainable business model.
“When we joined the GET challenge, Symlify was completely just an idea,” says Ariel Silva, Jr., Technology Head of Symlify.
During the competition, the teams took advantage of the 1-on-1 coaching, sharing and training sessions,
as well as different resources such as case studies, industry reports, and many more offerings from the
Alibaba GET Network.
After constant conversations and feedback from stakeholders, Mike, Ariel, and Sky pivoted their idea from being a purely B2B (business-to-business) platform to now being a B2C (business-to-consumer) platform halfway through the competition. Out of over a thousand global teams participating in the challenge, Symlify celebrated victory when they placed third after multiple rounds of competing. They
also won a valuable cash prize of RMB 10,000 (over PHP 71,000) which the team plans to use for their
user acquisition capital.
“Seeing ourselves grow as entrepreneurs and having our idea validated and now, undergoing final bug
fixes before our official launch hopefully by end of this year has been our most satisfying moment in
business,” said Jann Skyler Teng.
Symlify is set to commercially launch by end of this year once alpha and beta testing have been completed. To date, they have over 50 pre-sign ups from a range of sellers selling a variety of products
including food.
Currently, the Symlify team comprises of interns and volunteers led by Michael Kakumoto (Head of Business Development and Strategy), Jann Skyler Teng (UX and Design Head), Ariel Silva, Jr. (Technology and Engineering Head), and Adrian Silva (Technical Lead).
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