I WILL write about five companies and their products or services which have improved our lives. While they are not perfect, they resulted in vast improvement or satisfaction for the lives of their users. Disclosure: I have not represented Cebu Pacific or GCash. I did extensive business for SM, but the last was over a decade ago. My youngest son worked for YouTube for nine years. I have on and off represented San Miguel but not since Covid and not the food group that includes beer. I will discuss these five in alphabetical order.
Cebu Pacific made safe air transportation affordable and available to everyone (or every Juan as their witty slogan goes) and less celebrated but equally important — available nearly everywhere in the Philippines that matters.
Frankly, their relentless but efficient pursuit and implementation of that goal also made Philippine Air Lines and other domestic players respond, but it is clear that for domestic air travel they are the pacesetter. Domestic air travel used to be for the elite and corporate. Many of us know many domestic helpers used to spend a large part of their vacation taking laborious and often unsafe land and sea travel home. Cebu Pacific changed that. Some may carp on the bare-bones nature of the service and so on, but you can’t have both and be profitable. They know their priority and mission and deliver on it. I told Lance Gokongwei, Cebu Pacific is the most game-changing legacy of his father as he created and delivered on something that really made lives better for everyone and not just the middle class and elite.
GCash, likewise, made financial services and cash equivalent services affordable, safe and efficient for everyone as well. It adapted from Ali Pay jointly with its partner and shareholder Ant Group, an affiliate of Alibaba. I was surprised to realize it was launched way back in 2004. Again, when many would have to dangerously bring cash back home to the province and amounts were too big or small or where they were going was too distant from a bank or remittance center, GCash solved that. And in a very user-friendly and efficient manner. What cell phones are to communication, GCash and the like are to financial services. Just like with Cebu Pacific, do not underestimate the complexity and focus needed to deliver their services efficiently and seamlessly. It is not like installing something and letting it run itself. These two hands-on businesses are anything but auto-pilot enterprises.
San Miguel Beer is probably the Filipino product that is literally taken by everyone in the Philippines, from the richest in the country to someone in an extremely remote area. Truly, the national product that its customers rely on and can count on the quality and reliability of. Its days as a monopoly product are long gone yet it maintains its commanding market share over 40 years after a local and well-funded competitor entered. Their corporate website says their nine beer brands have an aggregate market share of 92.4 percent. By contrast in Thailand, Boon Rawd, which owns Singha and Leo Beer, used to have a monopoly on mass locally brewed beer until Thai Beverages started its competing beer business roughly a decade after Asia Brewery. They have a 62 percent market share, and their competitor Thai Beverages, which owns Chang Beer, has 32 percent, with the rest shared by others. San Miguel has defended its market share vigorously and successfully partly because it is a trusted and reliable product that has a reservoir of trust.
SM Malls truly transformed not just shopping but that and leisure time for literally everyone in its broad customer base. When I won my first deal with SMIC in 1997, which was an international bond offering, Mr. Sy asked me if I understood their model. I told him if I go to an upscale mall, my driver will wait in the car (this was before cell phones were ubiquitous). If I go to SM Mega Mall, I have to tell him what time to be by the car, as he will spend time in the mall himself. He told me I got it. SM Malls made it a family experience for all income groups where all were welcome and at home. If you went there on a Sunday, you could start with mass, have breakfast, shop a bit or do some leisure activities like even ice skate, have lunch, watch a movie, do what shopping you needed, even have dinner then go home. And in a clean, comfortable, air-conditioned and spacious environment, whether you went to Makati, Malate or Marikina. You had the equivalent experience where for many it was an oasis to leisurely, safely and affordably spend their time whether an hour or the whole day.
YouTube democratized video viewing whether on demand, on schedule and on practically any topic, style or geography. No surprise, it is now the most watched medium beating cable, networks and everything else. And for the most part, it is free. The trend had been broadcasting, trying to find the most profitable area, which often meant the highest common denominator for what your audience given your geography or area of emphasis was. Cable tv loosened that with choice and DVRs with the ability to save and record. Streaming took choice and when to watch further. YouTube combined all of that and had a model that made narrowcasting profitable, available and frankly dominant. Having such broad and seemingly limitless content does have major downside in the debasing of discourse and so on. But if you are willing to limit yourself to reliable sites, maintain critical thinking and go beyond what the algorithm recommends, there is a lot to learn and enjoy in a manner unimaginable before YouTube. What minor recognition I have from my interviews would be a minuscule fraction if not for their availability on YouTube. And Google developed this in a cost-efficient and amazingly profitable and scalable manner. To me, the accomplishment is equal to Google’s search engine.
Disclosure: The author is an independent director of the state-run Maharlika Investment Corp.
Frankly, their relentless but efficient pursuit and implementation of that goal also made Philippine Air Lines and other domestic players respond, but it is clear that for domestic air travel they are the pacesetter. Domestic air travel used to be for the elite and corporate. Many of us know many domestic helpers used to spend a large part of their vacation taking laborious and often unsafe land and sea travel home. Cebu Pacific changed that. Some may carp on the bare-bones nature of the service and so on, but you can’t have both and be profitable. They know their priority and mission and deliver on it. I told Lance Gokongwei, Cebu Pacific is the most game-changing legacy of his father as he created and delivered on something that really made lives better for everyone and not just the middle class and elite.
GCash, likewise, made financial services and cash equivalent services affordable, safe and efficient for everyone as well. It adapted from Ali Pay jointly with its partner and shareholder Ant Group, an affiliate of Alibaba. I was surprised to realize it was launched way back in 2004. Again, when many would have to dangerously bring cash back home to the province and amounts were too big or small or where they were going was too distant from a bank or remittance center, GCash solved that. And in a very user-friendly and efficient manner. What cell phones are to communication, GCash and the like are to financial services. Just like with Cebu Pacific, do not underestimate the complexity and focus needed to deliver their services efficiently and seamlessly. It is not like installing something and letting it run itself. These two hands-on businesses are anything but auto-pilot enterprises.
San Miguel Beer is probably the Filipino product that is literally taken by everyone in the Philippines, from the richest in the country to someone in an extremely remote area. Truly, the national product that its customers rely on and can count on the quality and reliability of. Its days as a monopoly product are long gone yet it maintains its commanding market share over 40 years after a local and well-funded competitor entered. Their corporate website says their nine beer brands have an aggregate market share of 92.4 percent. By contrast in Thailand, Boon Rawd, which owns Singha and Leo Beer, used to have a monopoly on mass locally brewed beer until Thai Beverages started its competing beer business roughly a decade after Asia Brewery. They have a 62 percent market share, and their competitor Thai Beverages, which owns Chang Beer, has 32 percent, with the rest shared by others. San Miguel has defended its market share vigorously and successfully partly because it is a trusted and reliable product that has a reservoir of trust.
SM Malls truly transformed not just shopping but that and leisure time for literally everyone in its broad customer base. When I won my first deal with SMIC in 1997, which was an international bond offering, Mr. Sy asked me if I understood their model. I told him if I go to an upscale mall, my driver will wait in the car (this was before cell phones were ubiquitous). If I go to SM Mega Mall, I have to tell him what time to be by the car, as he will spend time in the mall himself. He told me I got it. SM Malls made it a family experience for all income groups where all were welcome and at home. If you went there on a Sunday, you could start with mass, have breakfast, shop a bit or do some leisure activities like even ice skate, have lunch, watch a movie, do what shopping you needed, even have dinner then go home. And in a clean, comfortable, air-conditioned and spacious environment, whether you went to Makati, Malate or Marikina. You had the equivalent experience where for many it was an oasis to leisurely, safely and affordably spend their time whether an hour or the whole day.
YouTube democratized video viewing whether on demand, on schedule and on practically any topic, style or geography. No surprise, it is now the most watched medium beating cable, networks and everything else. And for the most part, it is free. The trend had been broadcasting, trying to find the most profitable area, which often meant the highest common denominator for what your audience given your geography or area of emphasis was. Cable tv loosened that with choice and DVRs with the ability to save and record. Streaming took choice and when to watch further. YouTube combined all of that and had a model that made narrowcasting profitable, available and frankly dominant. Having such broad and seemingly limitless content does have major downside in the debasing of discourse and so on. But if you are willing to limit yourself to reliable sites, maintain critical thinking and go beyond what the algorithm recommends, there is a lot to learn and enjoy in a manner unimaginable before YouTube. What minor recognition I have from my interviews would be a minuscule fraction if not for their availability on YouTube. And Google developed this in a cost-efficient and amazingly profitable and scalable manner. To me, the accomplishment is equal to Google’s search engine.
Disclosure: The author is an independent director of the state-run Maharlika Investment Corp.
