Super health center
The Malabon Super Health Center started catering to the medical needs of non-COVID patients and outpatient department cases in Barangay Catmon starting last month, providing three laboratory services — pharmacy with complete medicines, X-ray facility, and birthing facility.
The Super Health Center in Catmon also offers lying-in services.
The Super Health Center is open daily and offers 24/7 service to all individuals seeking medical help.
As of the moment, with one Super Health Center accessible to the public, the daily average number of patients within eight hours is 70 to 80.
The city government hopes to expand services to Barangay Potrero this coming November and to Barangay Tonsuya and Longos by February or March.
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Wavemaker awarded
Venture capital firm Wavemaker Partners was awarded the “VC Exit of the Year” and “VC Deal of the Year” at the 29th Annual Singapore Venture Capital & Private Equity Association Awards.
Wavemaker won “VC Exit of the Year” through its investment arm TradeGecko, a retail inventory and order management software company that was acquired by a dominant US player in 2020. It was awarded the “VC Deal of the Year” with Growsari, a B2B platform for mom-and-pop stores based in the Philippines to date.
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Brisk voucher sales
The September Online Sale (SOS) mounted by the Hotel Sales and Marketing Association Philippines sold over 5,000 travel vouchers in the one month of its run.
Voucher sales increased by 194 percent and gross sales likewise shoot up by almost 101 percent, from last year’s P14.5 million to this year’s P29.23 million.
The majority of buyers are from Quezon City, Manila, and Cebu. In Luzon, most of whom are planning to go on short road trips, with hotels and resorts from the Batangas, Cavite, Tagaytay, and Laguna cluster selling the highest number of vouchers at 32 percent; Boracay/Iloilo, 23 percent; Manila/Pasay/Parañaque, 14 percent; Clark/Bataan/Ilocos/Banaue, 12 percent; Cebu/Bohol, 9 percent; Palawan/Davao, 5 percent; Makati/BGC/Alabang, 3 percent; and Ortigas/Pasig/Quezon City, 2 percent.
Eighty hotels and resorts across the country participated in this year’s SOS and gave away deals and discounts for as much as 70 percent off.
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Limited Philippine edition whisky bottle
Johnnie Walker–the Diageo-owned Scotch whisky brand–recently released its John Walker & Sons XR21 Philippine Series, which is a limited-edition bottle that is unique only to the Philippines.
The design features endemic Philippine animals as the brand aims to drive awareness in wildlife preservation in the country as part of its Next Steps Initiative.
Johnnie Walker teamed up with Philippine Parks and Biodiversity for this limited-edition release to support the efforts of these organizations in educating and empowering communities across the country about the plight of the endangered species and the restoration of their habitats featured in its John Walker & Sons XR21 Philippine Series bottle. These include the Philippine tarsier, Philippine eagle, and Philippine Crocodile.
“This landmark partnership targets at taking action to help ensure that we play our part in creating a balanced ecosystem for people and nature alike” said Kavita Hans, general manager of Diageo Philippines.
A portion of the proceeds from the sales of the John Walker & Sons XR21 Philippine Series bottles will be committed to help ensure the survival of these native species as well as the habitats of these species as proceeds will also support the reforestation projects of Philippine Parks and Biodiversity in growing forests where wildlife thrive.
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Kia brand relaunch
Kia Philippines will be relaunching the brand in the Philippines on November 8.
Earlier this year, Kia Corporation introduced a new corporate logo and global brand slogan “Movement that inspires,” a declaration of the auto manufacturer’s daring transformation as well as an all-new product philosophy centered on creating products that encourage consumers to move towards their ambitions.
Kia Philippines said the relaunch is a local adaptation of the new and bold Kia.
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SWAT Mobility takes on Cebu
SWAT Mobility, a Singapore-based mobility solutions provider, has recently closed an operations partnership contract with Hagibis Ventures Inc. (HVI) to jumpstart its expansion in Visayas.
According to Maria Theresa Busmente, SWAT Mobility country business head for the Philippines,,Visayas is among the areas of growth and that Cebu’s transport situation is one of the most affected when the pandemic has struck.
SWAT Mobility is the largest transport solutions provider in Southeast Asia that is working with huge corporations to digitize employee transportation, helping companies navigate high-capacity vehicle pooling services.
Under the partnership with SWAT, HVI will serve as the digital delivery provider to allow the smart mobility technology to function optimally within the local setting. In particular, HVI deals with passenger registration, driver communications, command center monitoring and emergency response.
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1M doses administered
AC Health has administered over 500,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, breaching the halfway mark of its one-million dose target.
Since its official launch in July, AC Health, through its COVIDShield program, has been inoculating members of priority groups across different LGUs, Ayala Group employees and their dependents, and partner companies across 25 active vaccination sites in key priority areas around the country, including NCR, Bulacan, Laguna, Pampanga, Batangas, Cebu, Davao, Palawan, among others. This large-scale initiative is in support of the Philippine National Vaccine Deployment Program and complements the public sector’s efforts to vaccinate majority of Filipinos at requisite scale and speed to achieve optimal protection. Over 50,000 regular employees across the different Ayala parent companies have been vaccinated. This brings the vaccination rate of the Ayala group at 90 percent, with majority of the remaining employees scheduled for vaccination in the next few weeks.
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Diner 55 opens
A new player in casual dining, Diner 55, will opens its doors to serve that classic diner fare on November 4 in its main branch on Dr. Garcia and Mother Ignacia streets, Brgy Paligsahan, Quezon City
Led by its owner Jean Dumago-Descallar and consultant Chef RJ Ungco, Diner 55 boasts of a menu that embraces variety, goes beyond borders and elevates the classic diner fare by offering huge servings of comfort food from all over the world. Garlicky Beef Bowl, the 5-5 Burger, High Five Salad , Cereal Milk Panna Cotta, Yo! Fernando Pizza among others.
It offers both al fresco and in-store dining as well as pick-up and delivery.
The new diner is also planning to open more branches in the future.
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Prince Retail focuses on pricing innovation
Revionics, an Aptos company and provider of retail pricing, promotion, markdown and advanced analytics solutions, recently announcedthat Prince Retail would deploy Revionics’ intelligent pricing platform.
The technology investment will enable Prince Retail to optimize pricing decisions for products sold at its more than 65 locations throughout the Philippines.
Based in Cebu City, Prince Retail is one of the fastest-growing chain of retail stores which has opened a significant number of new locations in recent years, expanding its reach throughout the far-flung regions around the country.
Trusted by retailers around the world, Revionics is a recognized leader in the retail price optimization space. Its cloud-based solutions are used by top retailers across the grocery, discount, drug, convenience, sporting goods, general merchandise, hardware, and specialty retail sectors.
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Bayad franchise program
Alongside its continued efforts to innovate payment solutions, Bayad also brings business opportunities to enterprising Filipinos through its franchising program, which has been catapulted to the Franchise Excellence Hall of Fame of the Philippine Franchise Association.
Adding a Bayad Center franchise can boost existing small and medium businesses like bakeries, general merchandise, pharmacies, pawnshops, groceries, cooperatives, and travel agencies, to name a few. Bayad is known to generate customers traffic with its highly in-demand service backed by a trusted brand name and reputation.
SME business owners can opt to avail of affordable franchise package for a counter that will enable them to process more than 350 biller brands. On top of bills payment, Bayad Center franchisees can also provide other financial services such as e-loading, remittance, ATM transactions, insurance, loan pay-out, medical reimbursement and more.
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Digital partnership
The city of Manila and Microsoft recently signed a partnership agreement to drive innovation and accelerate digital transformation in the capital city, potentially empowering more than two million citizens for the digital age.
“Our collaboration with Microsoft — a global leader in software, education, enterprise, digital and cloud technologies — accelerates our ambitions to build a 21st century economy that lifts up the poor, improves job opportunities for our middle class, enhances how the City Government of Manila works internally and improves how we will deliver services and enhances our overall business and investment-friendly attractiveness, especially as we seek to recover from the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Mayor Francisco “Isko” Moreno Domagoso.
The partnership substantially advances the ambitions and goals for the Go Manila initiative, across three broad partnership workplans: empowering every Manila resident to become smart citizens; modernizing Manila’s LGU workplace and; enhancing and promoting data-driven policies and governance
The partnership will seek to further optimize the city’s “Go Manila” platform, a whole-of-city digital data infrastructure initiative. Microsoft will provide access to Government-specific resources and expertise in Artificial Intelligence and map horizons for future digital plans.
