A LOCAL fund intends to increase by as much as 10 times its second investment in Philippine technology start-up companies that offer “disruptive and game-changing” technologies.

In a briefing, Martin Lichauco, managing partner at Global Gateway Venture Capital, said the fund will invest $50 million to $100 million by pooling investments of top tier local companies and investors and use the combined resources to build up and maximize the value of those promising firms.

“What we do is we will invest in companies that are Filipino-engineered. What G2VC does is bring these companies in the global arena, in Silicon Valley,” said Lichauco, adding that firms engaged in renewable energy and green technology could be considered attractive investments.

Silicon Valley is the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California, home to the world’s largest technology corporations.

Lichauco was recently tapped as managing director of the Hong Kong office of merchant bank Siemer & Associates as part of its maiden foray into Asia. He intends to use this opportunity to provide a window for Philippines firms to be put in the radar screen of future investors.

In 2008, G2VC had an initial investment of $10 million in four technology companies, such as Exist, a world-class software engineering firm that provides technology expertise to Fortune 500 companies; Morphlabs, regarded as one of the top players in the field of cloud computing; MaestroDev, a software retooling company driving global open source projects with thousand users, and Infinte.ly, provider of social media performance and monitoring solution.

Lichauco said the “incumbents” or big technology firms such as IBM, Yahoo! and Google have adopted a “why-build-when-you-can-buy-strategy,” and are eyeing acquisitions of “robust” technologies, something the Filipinos could offer.

In 2005, Exist delivered a revolutionary Java application platform which made waves as IBM’s first Open Source acquisition and was eventually integrated with IBM WebSphere suite of products.

MestroDev’s flagship product Maestrom is now American Express’ corporate standard software solution kit.

G2VC’s fund is designed for a three-year investment, shorter than the typical 10-year investment horizon, providing investors a potential exit through mergers and acquisitions or initial public offerings.

Lichauco said Morphlabs has a potential of being listed outside of the Philippines, while one investee company can be sold for more than $100 million.

“We’re on harvest mode, which means we’re on exit mode. If you’re at the tail end, there should be some exit offers and we should be receiving proposals,” said Lichauco.

In the 1990s, the better investments of venture capitalists were in non-technology, reflective of the underdeveloped stage of technology in the country.

“Now the country is more developed, we’re in a better position to invest in disruptive and game-changing technologies,” he said.