Doing business by text

To many people, starting a business is key to better life.

The biggest hurdle to surpass is putting up capital (usually and at least in five digits). Some go abroad to save up. Others borrow from friends, family and institutions. A brave few put on loan or even sell what they have for promise of getting more eventually and hopefully when business picks up. The perfumed lot, well, they are born with it.

The second challenge is deciding which seeming lucrative business (food, water, clothing are popular choices) to venture into.

Is it really this hard to go into business? Not if you have a mobile phone. Yes, the one in your pocket.

A recent sit-down with Ishmael Bengco III led to this discovery. Ishmael is president and CEO of Portal Innovations, Inc., a leading Information and Technology (IT) company that developed the revolutionary Short Messaging Service-based technology for multi-marketing by practically anyone who has a mobile phone (in the Philippines that’s about 40 million people).

Ishmael says Portal works simply: By texting a series of commands according to specific formats to official Portal access numbers, Portal members can electronically retail a myriad of "virtual" prepaid cards across brands and for stored value products.

"Wala ng maraming kiskis ng card, ika nga," says Ishmael.

Mobile phone load, flower delivery, health products, money transfer… a lot of things, really, are now accessible within minutes and from anywhere via mobile phone and even using already existing sim card, thanks to Portal.

To date, close to 200,000 people (the dealers and retailers of Portal) translate this technology into opportunity on regular basis and with ultra-satisfactory results. Some students who are members of Portal have already happily bought for themselves iPods and laptops just from commissions they have gotten and continue to do so from Portal.

Professionals, housewives, OFWs and others have bought houses, cars and set up other businesses. Thanks to the lucrative m-commerce (mobile commerce) Portal provides.

The company, in fact, had recently become one of Top 10,000 Philippine Corporations. How can it not be when it shelled out close to P40-M in commissions to its members in 2006 alone? All because these people have cell phones and have discovered Portal.

It’s no surprise that the idea of empowering people would come from someone like Ishmael. A Chemical Engineering undergraduate of UST who had to drop out of college due to financial difficulty, Ishmael had to pass through several storms before walking on sunshine today.

"We were so poor then that I remember dreading the coming of the rainy season," he says. "Whenever it rained, my family and I got wet even inside our house because we didn’t have enough money to have our leaking roof fixed."

Fortunately, Ishmael was a voracious reader of business model books that gave him ideas on how its authors or its now-important subjects rose to the top of their games. Practical minded, observant and a quick learner, Ishmael learned from people he worked with and never took his feet off the ground even when he was already earning about half a million pesos every month (he now, of course, earns more than that).

"There is opportunity even in the direst situation," he says. "One just has to open his eyes."

He also values public trust. In running Portal, Ishmael did not think twice in upgrading its data center by acquiring equipment and services of global leading uninterruptible power supply (UPS) provider, American Power Conversion (APC) to the tune of millions of pesos.

With APC backing Portal, every Portal dealer, retailer and consumer is assured of reliable service come hell or high waters. If you order for it, you’ll get it for sure is Portal’s proud business dictum.

The micro business system being employed in Portal (particularly their LoadXtreme service) has been so successful that even Africa and Europe have been calling on Ishmael for possibility of him helping doing the same in these continents.

Apart from the Philippines, Portal is doing good business in Singapore. "I guess this only shows that the Philippines is ahead of the rest of the world in some things like texting," he says. "We, in fact, and hard this may seem to believe, are five years ahead of the US in terms of mobile phone utility."

Ishmael is proud of his company’s stability and its stranglehold on the market.

But he is prouder still of what it really means to Filipinos. "To people who want to have a business, Portal makes that dream within reach. To consumers, it means more convenient transactions. Portal empowers the common man," he says.

To us, it means we’ll never treat mobile phones and texting the same way.

(Portal Innovations Corp. is located at Suite 1905 Galleria Corporate Center EDSA cor. Ortigas Ave., QC. Its websites are www.loadxtreme.com.ph and http://d2d.portal.com.ph. For details, call 914-2647 to 49).