Student teams from the Philippines' top universities, UP, La Salle, and Ateneo de Manila University, have pitched their business ideas before a panel of top tech leaders during the Big 3 Startup Showdown. Organised with the support of respected faculty from the participating schools, the hackathon aims to converge the next generation of Filipino changemakers.
The students presented their fast-paced pitches and high-impact solutions in just a minute to a judging panel that included Maya's chief product officer, Mitch Padua; mWell's CIO, Albert Padin; Google Philippines' customer engineer, Loys Talip, and Gobi Core's founding partner Carlo Delantar. The panel, with their expertise and experience, offered critical feedback and real-world insights, shaping the future of these innovative ideas.
"We witnessed incredible ingenuity from these top universities—ideas grounded in real-world problems and driven by purpose," said Mitch Padua, Maya Group's chief product officer. "That's the magic of young innovators: they're not just coding apps —they're crafting solutions. At Maya, we're proud to champion that mindset. It's exactly how we began—by daring to reimagine how things are done."
Winning ideas
Three teams emerged as winners and took home a Php30,000 cash prize each.
- LittleBranch: A portal for discovering over 1,000 exciting kids' activities across the Philippines.
- Quasar: The first all-in-one, AI-powered platform for automating loan approval services in the Philippines.
- Venyu: The largest one-stop sports venue booking platform with over 1,000 courts in Metro Manila.
Winning teams will also participate in the Geeks on a Beach 2025, a global beachside tech conference, to pitch their ideas to international investors and thought leaders.
