Industry: Edtech

Villgro Philippines is a gender-smart impact incubator founded in 2017 and based in Makati, operating as the Philippine chapter of Villgro, an impact-investing organization with roots in India that runs country-specific programs across several emerging markets. Rather than writing occasional checks from a fixed fund, Villgro Philippines runs a direct incubation-and-investment portfolio that has grown to around 39 enterprises across health, education, agriculture, affordable housing, and women-and-girls-focused businesses, pairing capital with hands-on investment-readiness support. It also co-founded two pieces of investing infrastructure the local ecosystem lacked: Impact Pioneers, described by Villgro itself as the Philippines' first dedicated impact angel-investing network, built jointly with xchange; and WE Rise Community, an access-to-finance platform for women entrepreneurs. Its most recent initiative, AI4Health Asia, was launched with Canada's IDRC as the first accelerator of its kind in the region dedicated to responsible-AI health startups, focused on sexual, reproductive, and maternal health and on epidemic preparedness across South and Southeast Asia.

Philippines' largest platform for college search, scholarships, and career guidance

Virtual labs platform helping companies and schools teach hands-on tech skills online

Outsourced online tutoring platform connecting vetted Filipino teachers to global students

Core Capital is a Manila-based venture capital firm founded in 2018 by partners Jason Gaisano, Ken Ngo, and Carlo Chen-Delantar, with five partners and nine or more confirmed investments to date. Its flagship investment vehicle, the Gobi-Core Philippine Fund, is co-managed jointly with Pan-Asian VC firm Gobi Partners — already a separate entry in this directory — which makes Core Capital the Philippine general partner behind that joint fund rather than a fully independent, unconnected firm. Confirmed portfolio includes Humble Sustainability, a circular-economy/sustainability company, and Edukasyon.ph, a Philippine education-and-careers platform.

Gobi Partners is a Pan-Asian venture capital firm founded in 2002, with roughly US$1.5-1.6 billion in assets under management and investments in more than 350 startups across 15+ Asian markets, including several unicorns. In the Philippines, Gobi Partners operates through Gobi-Core Philippine Fund, a joint venture founded in 2018 with local firm Core Capital (founding partners Jason Gaisano, Ken Ngo, and Carlo Chen-Delantar), headquartered in Manila. In 2023, Gobi-Core became one of the first firms officially accredited as a Co-Investment Partner of the Philippine government's Startup Venture Fund, a joint DTI-NDC initiative with a US$10 million allocation under RA 11337.

Cebu edtech: programming education platform plus an AI handwritten-grading assistant