The BING KIMPO Show.: From today's issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer's Sunday Biz: From the brains to a brand

Inquirer Money / Top Stories

http://business.inquirer.net/money/topstories/view_article.php?article_id=315985

From the brains to a brand

By Bing Kimpo
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: January 22, 2011

MANILA, Philippines—For several decades, Asian industries have seemed content to remain at the background, providing manufacturing, research and other support services for Western brands.
In the last few years however, regional suppliers such as BenQ, HTC and Huawei have begun to make that leap of faith to the forefront, casting themselves in the retail shelves and spotlights, and facing customers worldwide carrying their own names.
Here in the Philippines, Butuan-based broadcast electronics company Marjeds Systems Inc. (MSI, www.marjeds.com) is similarly throwing its hat in the global game, behind its own brand, Digital ST.
Digital ST is MSI’s stamp on its line of broadcast equipment for digital radio, TV, cable and satellite systems. The Digital ST product portfolio includes broadcast transmitters, satellite uplink and distribution facilities and equipment, as well as set-top boxes. MSI’s big, hairy and audacious goal is to be a key player as the broadcast media industry inches closer toward full digitalization.
An ambitious goal, perhaps, but one that MSI majority owner and CEO Ed Millana, 39, believes the company is prepared for. After all, he himself has trained for this moment since Grade 5.
Yes, Grade 5.
In 1984, Ed Millana’s father unexpectedly received a call to take on a job in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He hurriedly prepared for his overseas contract, but was left to settle one last item of business before his trip: what to do with an already paid-for non-formal course in electronics at the Agusan National High School in Butuan? Gamely, his fifth-grade son took his slot. Six months of entire Saturdays at school later, Ed Millana finished the course, topped his class and even graduated with honors.
In high school, Ed carried on his passion for electronics, repairing television sets and Betamax video-cassette player-recorder units from his home-based shop. He later began his tertiary education at Urios College in Butuan, where he earned a certification as an electronics technician, before moving to Manila where he earned an Electronics Communication Engineering degree from the University of the East in 1995.
Following a two-year stint with electronics company WEC, where he mastered the R&D and design aspects of radio communications equipment, Millana returned to Butuan in 1997 to become an entrepreneur. He founded MSI with a starting capital of P10,000. His company’s business initially consisted of more repair work on radio communications equipment.
MSI’s big break came in 1998, when it was commissioned by Keppel Communications as a sub-contractor to survey prospective cell sites in Cebu for Globe Telecom. Two years later, SMART Communications hired MSI to build cellsites for its new digital GSM network, a contract that soon expanded to over 250 cell sites. Apart from SMART, MSI also built some 50 cell sites for Globe Telecom.
In 2006, with a worthy war chest from its lucrative cell site construction contracts, MSI decided to invest heavily in research and development, spending on software, test equipment and engineers.
The gamble paid off, as MSI began bagging contracts for R&D work from Chinese and Korean original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). It was also awarded projects by UK defense contractor Racal Communications.
Three years later, armed with experience and expertise as a subcontractor, MSI decided it was ready to break in to the scene with its own brand. In 2009, MSI secured permits from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to manufacture and distribute broadcast electronics equipment. The company subsequently began producing its own Digital ST-branded products.
Today, MSI’s Digital ST equipment is all over the world. In the Philippines, its transmitters are used by the likes of Progressive Broadcasting Network and block timer UNTV. Abroad, Digital ST equipment has been brought by MSI resellers to customers in several countries—even those on the leading edge of broadcast electronics themselves, such as EMC in Germany, RRSat and Sentinel-SMG LLC in the United States, and SET Ltd in Georgia. A Digital ST satellite encoder even reportedly sits on a rack of a Fox affiliate in the US.
Apart from selling its own equipment, MSI now is also the regional representative of foreign brands in the booming broadcast electronics space. These include the Israel-based LiveU brand of backpack satellite uplink equipment.
“The Filipino has always been known to be crafty, brainy—in our own lingo, ‘wais,’” says Millana. This has served us well in supporting foreign business, whether as subcontractors or as service providers, he explains.
“The challenge—and opportunity—for all of us now,” he shares, “is to move up to the next level and bring our own brands to the rest of the world.”