Ordering online for delicacies and local crafts from the Western Visayas region will soon be easier as leading telecoms and digital services provider PLDT, together with Voyager Innovations, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), and Go Negosyo recently held an e-commerce workshop for small business owners under the #Ready Economic Growth Campaign in the region.

A total of nearly 200 Ilonggos and Negrenses were equipped with knowledge on e-commerce. After the workshops in Iloilo and Bacolod, attendees went home with their own TackThis! stores, an online selling platform that will be their gateway to introduce and sell their products worldwide. The workshop likewise introduces them to Voyager’s digital payments arm PayMaya and digital lending platform Lendr for their financing needs that will help sustain their business’ operation.
 
“PLDT is actively partnering with organizations that promote and advocate entrepreneurship in the country as a key contributor to spurring economic growth,” said PLDT SVP and Head of Enterprise Jovy I. Hernandez.

“Bacolod City and Iloilo are rich with home-grown businesses that are unique trademarks of these regions like famous pasalubongs Biscochos and Butterscotch from Iloilo, or Napoleones and other pastries from Bacolod or famous colorful masks from the Masskara Festival. These SMEs have the potential to further grow their market on an international scale when their products become available online for easier order and fast delivery going to anywhere in the country. Everyone can now have their authentic Biscocho and Butterscotch cravings from Iloilo easily satisfied,” he added.

For her part, Ireen Catane, Director of Enterprise Sales and Support at Voyager Innovations, said “We are strongly committed to leverage on technology and create platforms that will help SMEs in the country to thrive here and abroad. With the introduction of our online selling platform TackThis! to Western Visayas, businesses in this region have now become borderless, making their opportunities infinite.”
 
Covered under entrepreneurship advocate Go Negosyo’s Mentor Me program, the whole-day organized workshops introduced local business owners to the basics of participating in e-commerce, managing and organizing operations to cater online order, and getting needed funding through digital lending platform Lendr (www.lendr.com.ph). 

Strongly supported by the DTI, PLDT’s e-commerce enablement program aims to get more than 100,000 MSMEs in the country online by 2020 through specialized business training and Mentorship, access to a wider Marketplace through an online selling platform, and access to funding and sourcing capital Money to jumpstart their business.

“Now everything has come easy with the advent of e-commerce. That is why DTI has partnered with the experts and consultants from PLDT and Voyager Innovations to teach us how to do it,” said DTI Regional Director Rebecca M. Rascon during the workshop held in Iloilo.

Since launching the partnership earlier this year, PLDT and Voyager Innovations, with Go Negosyo, have closely been collaborating to further push the e-commerce enablement program to more mSMEs particularly in the regions for local merchants giving them the chance to participate in the digital marketplace. On-site workshops are already being scheduled and planned to cover more areas with a thriving SME community.