Homegrown hygiene company Sanitary Care Products Asia (SCPA) stays true to the credo that the secret to a successful business is its people as it pays forward to kick off the celebration of their silver year anniversary.
Creating homegrown brands for Filipinos like Sanicare, Femme, Tisyu, Cheers, Naturale, and Jade, “Great love for what we do and the people we do it for,” has been the running mantra of SCPA for the last 25 years.
During a virtual press event last 18 March 2021, SCPA Chairman and Founder Renato Sio, together with his son, SCPA President Venjosef Sio announced a partnership with the Asian Institute of Management-Dado Banatao Incubator (AIM-DBI) to enable Filipino dreams through HIIGENE (Human Investment x Impact Grant for Entrepreneurship and Empowerment). This project aims at empowering the new breed of Filipino business leaders.
The HIIGENE program is a search that will provide opportunities to deserving Filipino startups to accelerate their businesses, where people management philosophy is the top selection criterion. It will be anchored in the Sio family’s legacy of a people-first philosophy, inspiring entrepreneurs to put up a trailblazing company built on their peoples’ loyalty, trust, and respect.
Up to three (03) startup companies can be awarded equity-free grants of up to PHP500,000 each through this collaboration between SCPA and the AIM-DBI.
“What sets HIIGENE apart from other grants are these: First, this is the only time a local company is collaborating with a business school incubator work with startups as a pioneering business-academe-and-startup partnership. Second, when you talk about financial grants or competition grants here and abroad, we always talk of the innovation of the product or the technology; you rarely come across – and probably this is the first of its kind in the Philippines – where the focus of the grant is going back to the people who keep the company thriving and growing. These set #HIIGENE apart from the rest of the financial grants,” according to AIM-DBI Executive Director Mr. Prim Paypon, who happens to be the founder of a non-profit organization called The Dream Project PH. He shared that through HIIGENE, qualified start-ups have the chance to hone their leadership skills and grow their businesses through a 3-month long AIM-DBI mentorship program.
With activities set to run all throughout 2021, the HIIGENE Program will be accepting startup applicants from the AIM-DBI’s pool of 2018 alumni up to 2021 enrollees. These applications will undergo a rigid screening to ensure that the grant will be awarded only to those who fit the core philosophy of both SCPA and AIM-DBI. The awarding of grants will happen in June 2021 and a culminating activity to highlight the winner’s progress is slated by October 2021.
The launch of this philosophy-designed program was monumental for SCPA as it also coincides with AIM-DBI’s 3rd anniversary this month. The collaboration strengthens their respective belief in creating meaningful human impact through local businesses.
Reaching its silver anniversary despite recent economic challenges is no easy feat. For SCPA, there is no better way to celebrate 25 years of success than giving back — not only because it is the right thing to do — but because it shares and honors a philosophy that allowed them to attain this accomplishment: “Putting people first.”