Japan-based cloud service provider Sansan has expanded its premises in the Philippines, choosing Cebu as its base to onboard local tech talents.
While Sansan has made its solutions available in Southeast Asia, in Singapore and Thailand specifically, it has not yet opened its services in the Philippines.
Moreover, Sansan’s country manager Jay Pegarido, being Dipolog-raised, said that it has been his calling to create and provide jobs for Filipinos. He has worked with Japanese tech firms for 22 years.
“On top of that, we are creating more IT jobs to support our local economy,” Pegarido said in his speech at the Sansan Global’s opening ceremony held last December 7.
Currently, there are 30 software engineers aboard the developer center. The center is looking to hire 100 engineers by the end of May 2024.
“We are still using the same mission, to make “encounters into innovation” but this time, it’s going to be here in Cebu.”
In a press meeting with Pegarido, he revealed that the reason for putting up the center in Cebu was to combine “business and leisure.”
Pegarido said that they are looking to start organizing tech conferences and events in Cebu, it being a hotspot for IT firms and software developers.
With Sansan finally being able to set its roots in the Philippines, it also plans on partnering with private universities to help improve IT education for budding IT talents.
Many tech talents but lacking experience
Professional Filipino software engineers are abundant but IT education in the Philippines needs to take it up a notch in terms of training and application of theory.
“The IT industry must connect with the universities because there is a gap between what’s been taught in school and in the actual IT industry,” He said.
According to the Philippine Statistics Authority’s report in September this year, the tech industry has grown competitive, with software engineers being the second highest paid job in the Philippines.
With the IT industry’s rapid growth in the Philippines, Pegarido believes that there is an urgent need to train incoming tech professionals and fresh IT graduates.
The country manager said that the center also has a career development program in place that would help instill Sansan’s values to its Filipino software engineers.
“We want everyone to know that this is Sansan. They have to grasp the philosophy of Sansan,” Pegarido said.
The country manager, who has worked with Japanese IT firms for 22 years, said that the Japanese and Filipino determination at work is similar.
“In fact, I can say that we are much more advanced because of the language. Because of our influence from the U.S., much faster ang pag-absorb ng technology and the knowledge,” Pegarido said.
Sansan was founded in 2007 and currently has 9,000 clients over the world. It has over 80% market share in Japan.
The tech firm is known for digitizing business card culture via its Eight application and Bill One, a cloud-based invoice management.