By Trefor Moss 

MANILA-- Aisa Mijeno had her "eureka" moment one day in a remote village in the Cordillera mountains of the Philippines' northern Luzon province.

During a stint there as a volunteer, she would watch local people trek nearly 50 kilometers along jagged paths to buy fuel for kerosene lamps, their only source of light. Children would often miss school to make the trip.

"That's when the SALt Lamp was born," Ms. Mijeno said. "My vision was to solve this problem for the 16 million Filipinos who have no access to electricity--those in the mountains, on small islands, people off the grid."

Four years later, potential investors are lining up to back her invention, a lamp that runs for eight hours powered by a single cup of saltwater.

Ms. Mijeno's SALt Corp.--short for Sustainable Alternative Lighting--is one of a number of promising Philippine startups, many of which address the everyday challenges of people in developing countries.

"The Philippines can become a leader in using technology to address emerging-market problems," said Earl Valencia, president and founder of the IdeaSpace Foundation, a Manila-based incubator that has helped back Ms. Mijeno's lamp. "We just need a couple of big successes. Then this will go ballistic."

Until recently, it was difficult for entrepreneurs like Ms. Mijeno to get support for their ideas. The Philippines simply didn't have a startup scene.

The turning point came in 2012, when two Philippine telecommunication companies set up incubators--organizations that foster startups--to breathe life into Manila's technology sector. Smart Communications, a subsidiary of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., founded the nonprofit IdeaSpace. Kickstart Ventures, which typically takes a 12% to 20% stake in the startups it funds, was spun out of Ayala Corp. and SingTel-owned Globe Telecom Inc.

Kickstart has invested in 20 startups so far, and is realistic about its chances of sprouting the next Facebook Inc.

"The failure rate for startups is about 96%," said KickStart founder and President Minnette Navarrete. Even so, Ms. Navarrete said Philippine tech is poised for its first big breakthrough. "We're just waiting for that first $100 million exit," she said, referring to two successful endpoints for a tech startup: an initial public offering or a buyout.

The country's first tech IPO took place in December, when Xurpas Inc., a mobile content provider, raised $30 million on the local exchange. But it took Xurpas 15 years to go public, and Ms. Navarrete said the best of the city's new entrepreneurs would likely do far better in a fraction of the time.

One of the 20 startups backed by Kickstart is Kalibrr, a "talent marketplace" that connects companies with job seekers. It was founded in 2012 by Paul Rivera, who formerly worked at Google Inc. But he left his dream job in Silicon Valley in 2007 to return to the Philippines--which he left at the age of five--to found a startup.

"I thought, am I that crazy one that leaves Google?" he recalled, as his initial ventures found mixed success. Back then, Philippine startups faced a lonely struggle for survival, as they lacked California's refined ecosystem of investors, venture capitalists, cheerleaders and incubators, 32-year-old Mr. Rivera said.

But once an ecosystem began to coalesce around the two new incubators, everything started to click. Kalibrr received $100,000 from Kickstart for a 4% stake and then became the first Philippine company to participate in the prestigious Y Combinator incubator and investor program in Silicon Valley, raising $1.6 million in second-round funding.

Now, with venture capitalists from Japan, Singapore and the U.S. eyeing Philippine tech companies, expectations of local entrepreneurs are higher than ever, Mr. Rivera said. "Filipino startups used to be happy with a 1 million peso [$45,000] exit. I want a $100 million exit."

Alongside Filipino returnees in Manila's cosmopolitan tech community are foreign entrepreneurs who aim to use the youthful, tech-savvy and English-speaking Philippines as a springboard to jump into other emerging markets like India and Indonesia.

Among the Manila-based, foreigner-led startups following this playbook are Lenddo, which uses social media to build credit scores for people with no credit history--in the Philippines, about 80% of people don't have bank accounts--enabling them to get bank loans for the first time. And then there is mClinica, which provides discounts on medicine via a network of 1,500 Philippine pharmacies, while gathering market data for drug companies.

The best ideas, Mr. Valencia said, are coming from Filipinos themselves, people who live with the country's problems on a daily basis. In 2013, IdeaSpace started running a national contest to find--and then fund--the most promising Filipino startups.

"The first year we were so scared, we thought there'd be 50 applicants," recalled Mr. Valencia. There were 600 entrants. This year's contest drew more than 1,200. "We've been amazed by the pent-up demand," he said.

Twenty-three shortlisted applicants from across the country gathered in Manila in March for IdeaSpace's weeklong "boot camp"--an intensive course giving aspiring entrepreneurs a complete startup tool kit covering fundraising, valuation, branding, and teambuilding. In May, IdeaSpace will select 10 final winners, which each receive $50,000 in funding and the incubator's ongoing support.

"Here, 90% of the things people develop are trying to address a real problem," the 32-year-old Mr. Valencia said. He said Silicon Valley favors gimmicky messaging apps or obscure cloud-computing systems.

To address the problem of having no electricity, the 30-year-old Ms. Mijeno adapted a basic high school chemistry experiment to build and patent a device powerful enough to produce a bright and durable light.

SALt Corp. has received about $125,000 in funding so far, she said, and is receiving a steady stream of offers from venture capitalists. She added that it is partnering with nongovernmental organizations to help fund the lamp's distribution in poor communities across the Philippines, where its anticipated $22 price tag could be prohibitive, Ms. Mijeno said.

"Then India will be next," she said.

Write to Trefor Moss at Trefor.Moss@wsj.com

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