The next wave of business leaders and innovators is harnessing technology to tackle real-world challenges, as seen in the Metro Manila leg of the Byte Forward Hackathon held August 7 and 8 at Seda Vertis North.
Organized with the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), and hosted by Converge SME Solutions and Rev21 Labs, the 24-hour event gathered 10 university teams to craft solutions for problems sourced directly from PCCI members and Converge SME partners.
After a day of designing, prototyping. and live pitching to a panel of judges from PCCI, Converge, and Rev21 Labs, three teams stood out.
- 1st Place – De La Salle University (DLSU): A voice-powered mobile app that delivers sales and inventory insights, creates smart suggestions like pricing and bundling, AI-powered Q&A, and an auto-ordering feature.
- 2nd Place – Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP): A voice-command sales and stock logging solution with an analytics dashboard, designed for micro and small businesses, including live sellers.
- 3rd Place – Asian Institute of Management (AIM): A web portal that provides MSMEs with pricing assistance based on competitor data, using optical character recognition (OCR) and data clustering.
The winners received P50,000, P30,000, and P20,000, respectively, with the top two teams also receiving 12 months of free internet.
The competition advances to the national stage at the 51st Philippine Business Conference and Expo on October 21 and 22 at the SMX Convention Center, Manila, where the Byte Forward Hackathon national champion will be crowned.
