New Ayala technology park ready to welcome tenants

MANILA, Philippines — The new technology park of the Ayala Group in Quezon City is ready to welcome its first batch of locators and retail tenants in the park’s Tech Portal and Retail @ the Tech Portal. The Ayala Group is building a 37.5-hectare technology park inside the Diliman campus of state-run University of the Philippines (UP) under a 25-year lease. Called the UP Ayala Land Technohub, it will be the second technology park inside the university to be managed by the Ayala Group. The first one is located north of the campus so it is nicknamed the UP-Ayala North Technology Park. The new technopark is aptly nicknamed the UP-Ayala South Techno Park since it is located south of the campus. Under phase one of the UP Ayala Land Technohub, Ayala Land, Inc., the Group’s real estate arm, is building 10 buildings for tenants, most of them engaged in information technology (IT) business. Six will be completed this year and three have already been operational since early this year. There are also plans to include residential and tourism components — a dormitory and businessman’s hotel to be built near UP’s Asian Institute of Tourism. There is also a retail and technology incubation component called the Tech Portal, which is located in the center of the park. It will be the only part of the technology park which will be open to the general public. The Tech Portal will house a technology business incubation (TBI) facility that can host 12 start-up companies whose interests are also in IT. The TBI facility will be managed by Ayala Foundation, Inc., which is also managing the TBI facility at the UP-Ayala North Technopark. Officials of Ayala Land and Ayala Foundation told GMANews.TV that nine of the 12 incubation offices at the new technology park have already been committed. Ayala Land is just waiting for the necessary government permit to allow the locators to hold offices in the facility. The start-ups are in the following types of IT business: voice-based telemarketing services, web-based accounting services, legal transcription and research, web page design; software development; communication equipment; Web and system development; B2B e-commerce; e-learning; IT-enabled services; and product research and development, and IT solutions. The incubation offices measure from 30 to 54 square meters each for small start-ups. There are also two conference rooms for the use of the locators. The walls of the rooms can be collapsed to accommodate a bigger audience. There will also be an exhibit area. Ayala Foundation will offer the Tech Portal locators the same package of services that they offer the UP North technology park locators. Ayala Foundation offers a Start in a Box package which includes human resource, accounting and payroll services, legal and intellectual property consultancy, access to a network of experts, and market research. Mercedes M. Barcelon, manager of the UP-Ayala TBI facilities, said mature start-ups which are ready to move on and will need bigger office space can occupy a multi-tenant building near the Tech Portal. Office spaces in this building average 100 sq. m. “The multi-tenanted building is what we in TBI would call next phase growth building," said Barcelon. According to the network of experts of the Ayala TBI, a project of the Ayala Foundation, start-ups have a lifespan of around four years after which they are expected to move on and be on their own. This network of experts included technopreneurs, entrepreneur mentors and coaches, scientists and engineers, and venture capitalists. Ayala Land said the retail outlets in the Tech Portal, aptly called Retail @ the Tech Portal, are expected to be operational by October but turnover of the outlets already began this month. Ayala Land said the UP Ayala Technohub is patterned after some of the well-known and successful technology parks worldwide including the Tsukuba Science City at University of Tsukuba the Singapore Science Park at the National University of Singapore, Haidan Science Park at the University of Beijing, Silicon Valley at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and Route 128 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. - GMANews.TV