Chito Bustamante: The Engineer Takes Charge for a New Chikka Era

When doing a chronicle of Philippine Internet history, Chikka became synonymous with its founding CEO Dennis Mendiola. As he takes on a new role in the organization, leadership is passed on to Chito Bustamante.

Not known to many, Chito is a founder of Chikka as well and shares an equal passion for product development as Dennis. He was that Silicon Valley based engineer whom Dennis and partners first consulted on the business and technical viability of a “mobile instant messaging service” for launch in the Philippines.

Chito actually came up with the name "Chikka" for the service. The name also being a Filipino colloquial term for "small talk" which is the nature of many of our text messages really.

For a long time as chief operating officer (since 2002), Chito has stayed on top of both engineering and product development departments, the heart and soul of Chikka. He has led Chikka thru its ISO and CMMI Maturity Level 5 certifications, giving "a method to the madness" or the frenzy that characterized product development, marketing, quality assurance at Chikka, and making sure it could sustain the same even as the company pursues an aggressive international roll-out.

Some of Chito's more notable inventions include "TxtBack", a free-reply (sender subsidized) text service that has been a boon to pre-paid mobile users.

Chito as new Chikka CEO
As CEO in this new era at Chikka, Chito is focused on continuous product innovation and global partnerships that will replicate Chikka's success in similar markets, as well as services adoption by the mainstream of the on-line community.

Dino Ignacio and Bert is Evil

I featured Dino Ignacio in the Philippine Internet Review back in 2004 for his site Bert is Evil. He won the prestigious Webby Award in San Francisco, last March 6, 1998, and the only Filipino to date.

At that time, my understanding was that the site, Bert is Evil, is no longer available. To find this new site partly confuses me and will have to ask more if this belongs Dino Ignacio's site. Will update this post shortly. (Thanks Azrael for the heads-up)

More Filipinos Trading Stocks Online

It is estimated that around 60% of Filipino stock players now trade online while 40% do it live. "Those who are on the go rely on their live brokers, as well as those who really have loads of money to transact," this according to Gwen Nava, vice president for marketing and development in Absolute Traders & Consulting Services Inc.

Absolute Traders has about 1,500 members to date. To become a member, one must attend their seminars. Gwen shared that most of its members are still trading but are not limited to the local market. "A good 40% trades the in US, 30% Asian market, and 10% Forex."

Of those who trade, Gwen estimates that 60% trade online for both local and international. "Online trading gives one control over his/her own trades, anytime and anywhere. The rest still feel comfortable with live or offline brokers. Around 30% both trades online and still maintain their offline/live brokers."

How Gwen started

Gwen's entry in Absolute Traders started with her curiosity on the term "technical analysis" and how it may be used for the stock market. "My first experience with the (stock) market was a bad one. About way back 1990's during Petron's IPO. My dad and I bought shares and we're so happy when it reached more than a 100% only to be taken away after a few weeks. We didn't take profit thinking that it was supposed to be an "investment". Then, I solely relied on our broker, because I didn't know where to base our trades then. Although, we were already tracking the value of the stocks per day, we were not so sure how to interpret them after we plot them on a graphing paper."

"Thus, when Bonner Dytoc, founder of Absolute Traders convinced me to attend, I tried and found out that had there been a seminar like that years ago, I would have taken it and realized profits for my trades immediately. What really attracted me was the sense of community that both Bonner and Danny parted with their students. They were so passionate and sincere with what they were doing - that is, to educate the people that there is a better way to trade, and that everybody can and may be able to take part of the markets (local and international) and gain from it. They gave a different perspective of trading. That it really is a business and not merely gambling. You see, gambling in the market is taking action without thinking, whereas trading is studying your actions and assess the risk to rewards ratio first before doing anything."

"The good thing about learning technical analysis is that one is not limited to one market or one issue. It may be applied to all aspects of the financial market. Also, the time of when or where to trade is addressed. Thus, we expect that most will stay on the side during a "consolidation" (market moving sideways) and a "bear" (down trend) market. And when the market reverses (from downtrend to uptrend), we expect that most of them will be back in the scene and get back to working on more gains or increase in profits."

Absolute Traders is like a business community network and Gwen takes pride on their focus on developing members to become an "absolute trader". "We continue to come up with programs and seminars to be able to make a better trader out of our members. It is still a young community, trying to get the "system" right to continue to nurture each of its members. The difference also lies in the "passion" of how we conduct our seminars. We dream of a Philippines where more Filipinos take part in trading, thus, we have programs for people from all walks of life. For them to appreciate and know that trading the market is really not "rocket science". To-date, an estimate of 1% of the Filipino people take part in the market. Just imagine the good it'll bring the country if this percentage increases."

The site currently has an analyst forum, a bookmark of trading journals and blogs, daily chat session during trading hours of the local market to share experiences, knowledge and assist each members.

Gwen Nava also blogs at The Grape Bunch and is a DigitalFilipino.com Club Member.