Venture Capital Cafe: Eat, Drink, Play, Meet, Collaborate and Get Funded

Wazzup Pilipinas!

Otherwise known as VC Cafe, the establishment has more than just coffee or pastries because it offers potential entrepreneurs (with great ideas) to be funded by the "venture capitalists" from the company that owns the cafe.

The place is actually dedicated for those who want to hang out, play video games, watch cartoons from the 80s, admire the toys or posters on display, while enjoying good food, and at the same time could present their ingenious ideas that are worth hearing out.

Who knows? You may have the next Google, or Facebook, or Uber, AirBnB or whatever idea. It doesn't even have to be an app or anything online. Just as long as you think you ideas have potential and sustainable, it may warrant a look from the people behind Venture Capital Cafe.

We will also focus our attention on the food available in their menu which is not limited to coffee or pastries. They have full meals with presentations that would beat those served at fine dining restaurants and hotels.

 We asked the Chef to bring out one food item per category so we could show you how their food looks like. We also had a short interview with the Chef so he could explain more about the food.

Below is the video interview we had with the Chef and the Managing Director, as well as another video showcasing the food. Also featured here are photos of the dishes from starter to pasta, salad, main entree, and drinks. We also had some dessert for sharing but it was not included on the video since it was just an additional order after everything else was done.

B&B Burgers & Brewskies: Definitely Big in Taste Even Without Beer

Wazzup Pilipinas!

As usual, I'm the early bird to come to the restaurant since I really hate to be late for a food tasting event. Just as how I hate people coming in late since if its this kind of event, the food is usually served ahead for photo (and video) before finally eating them all for tasting. So if you come in late, you'll end up eating left-overs, and worst is that you won't be having any good photos (and videos) of the food.

However, my experience at this restaurant is somewhat different because it let us order our own choice of burger (from between two selections only) and it just served what we normally call as the starters. Drinks could be cola, beer, or any liquor, but I chose a healthier drink of mango smoothie or shake since it was too early for alcoholic drinks.

I couldn't recall anymore how I got invited to this food tasting event but something tells me it must have been from a long-time sign-up opportunity looking for bloggers to try out restaurants. It's either my memory has defeated me or it was from a long time ago, and it is only now that they opted to invite us.

We were greeted by the organizer, Paulo, together with the owner and Chef who could be clearly known by the uniform he was wearing having the name tag of Marc. Chef Marc said they had a former branch at Capitol Commons but it had to close down. Right now he is concentrating on this only branch located at BGC which is now about to offer new menus for the restaurant.

We were told to bring in a plus one to join us for lunch but I completely forgot about it. Thus, I came there alone, while most of the attendees were with someone. But no worries since I left the resto smiling because of their delightful food.

NEC launches Center of Excellence for Analytics Platform & Solutions in India

Wazzup Pilipinas!

NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) and NEC Technologies India Private Limited (NTI) announced the launch of a “Center of Excellence for Analytics Platform & Solutions” (COE-APS) for promoting solutions and services of NEC’s Big Data & Analytics Platform, “Data Platform for Hadoop (DPH)”. The COE-APS will simplify digital transformation and act as a one stop shop for both customers and partners in the Telecom, Retail, Banking, Financial Services, Insurance and Manufacturing sectors, as well as Government organizations. NEC aims to achieve revenue of more than $100M USD within 3 years of the COE-APS’ establishment, which is being set-up with an overall investment of $10M USD over the same period.

The COE-APS will initially focus on markets that include Japan, India, Singapore, Philippines and Hong Kong, then gradually expand services throughout APAC and other regions. In order to support these growing operations, NEC plans to organize a team of 100 professionals within the first few years, as the Global Big Data & Analytics market is expected to reach $210B USD by 2020 (*1). Hadoop alone is expected to reach $50.2B USD by 2020 (*2). With the industry already facing a shortage in talent, specifically in Hadoop and analytics areas, the establishment of the COE-APS will help NEC to leverage India’s strong talent base.

In recent years, the exponential growth in data processing is straining the capabilities of conventional databases and data warehouse solutions. With the advent of Big Data & Analytics solutions, customers can be reassured that data is comprehensively and reliably analyzed, thereby enabling them to make well-informed decisions at the right time.

Moreover, the COE-APS will leverage the computational power and scalability of NEC’s specialized Hardware for Big Data & Analytics in order to flexibly handle the ever increasing demand for storage and computation by Hadoop.

The DPH features open source Hadoop from Hortonworks, as well as an analytics and Business Intelligence layer, making it a first-of-its-kind (*3) solution-in-a-box that frees customers from the burden of searching for the individual building blocks of big data analytics, and enables them to generate value from the enormous pools of data.

NEC has an accomplished record of contributing to national projects in India, including the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which is aligned with the Government’s “Digital India” initiative. For the DMIC, NEC established a Logistics Data Bank (LDB) that tracks almost 70% of containers in India (*4). In terms of the UIDAI, NEC provides a large-scale biometrics identification system which registered more than 1 billion people since its deployment.

“The key to success for organizations today is to make fast and informed decisions by extracting insights out of the huge volumes of data that are available to them. The new Center of Excellence is an important step towards utilizing big data analytics and NEC’s Data Platform for Hadoop to provide benefits for government bodies and enterprises in India and across the world,” said Tomoyasu Nishimura, Senior Vice President, NEC Corporation. “Going forward, we aim to continue driving digital transformation for industries of all sizes and markets.”