AIMHI Wins Mindanao TECH PLANTER 2026 + IGNYSIA Award

By Eve
October 7, 2026

From a problem lived on construction sites in the Philippines to recognition from a Japan-connected deep-tech ecosystem — including an industry award from a 120-year Japanese infrastructure group.

October 07, 2026 | Davao City, Philippines

AIMHI was named Grand Winner of Mindanao TECH PLANTER 2026 and also received the IGNYSIA Award, a special corporate recognition from Japan-based IGNYSIA Co., Ltd.

For our team, receiving both recognitions means far more than taking home two awards. It validates something we have believed from the beginning: the construction industry does not simply need more software. It needs better clarity — the ability to connect what is happening across a project, see risk earlier, and make better decisions before delays and costs get worse.

That is the problem AIMHI was built to solve.

The Construction Problem AIMHI Was Built to Solve

AIMHI did not begin with a trend report or a white-space exercise. It began with lived experience.

Our Founder and CEO, Cherryanne Lee Angoy, returned to the Philippines after 16 years working in U.S. wireless technology. She later spent eight years operating a construction company — years that exposed her to the realities of how projects are actually managed on the ground.

Engineers spent hours consolidating reports. Project information sat across spreadsheets, chat groups, paper records and disconnected systems. Materials and resources were difficult to track. And too often, project teams discovered delays or budget problems only after they had already happened.

“We didn’t find this problem in a report. We lived it.”
— Cherryanne Lee Angoy, Founder and CEO, AIMHI

Cherryanne’s own story is also rooted in Mindanao. As the granddaughter of a Mansaka, one of Mindanao’s Indigenous Peoples, building a company from the region carries a deeper meaning: to create technology from here, grounded in local realities, that can eventually solve problems far beyond here.

What the AIMHI Construction Intelligence Platform Does

AIMHI is a construction intelligence platform that turns scattered project data into clarity.

It connects information across schedule, cost, quantities, materials, manpower, equipment and field progress. Instead of stopping at reporting what has already happened, AIMHI is designed to help project teams detect problems earlier, understand how those problems may affect cost and schedule, and decide what to do next.

The way we explain it is simple: Capture. Connect. Detect. Recommend.

AIMHI captures field progress and resources, connects them to project information, detects deviations and risk, and recommends next actions — including catch-up recommendations when a project begins falling behind.

“Most systems help you react. AIMHI helps you act earlier.”

And because construction does not happen inside an air-conditioned office, AIMHI also works where the job site does. Its mobile and offline capabilities were built around a practical reality in Mindanao and many other emerging markets: connectivity is not always reliable.

Why the Mindanao TECH PLANTER 2026 Win Matters

Mindanao TECH PLANTER is part of Leave a Nest’s wider deep-tech ecosystem, connecting science- and technology-based innovators with corporate partners, investors, researchers and other collaborators. The 2026 competition evaluated finalists on four areas: Novelty, Practicability, Impact to the World and Passion.

Those four criteria made this competition especially meaningful to us. Passion is the reason AIMHI exists. Novelty is the shift we are building from construction reporting toward construction decision intelligence. Practicability is demonstrated by a product already in market and being used by real contractors. And impact is the reason we continue to think beyond contractor profitability alone.

When a project is delivered better, the benefit travels outward. A family receives a home sooner. A community gets a road or school closer to schedule. And project owners gain better visibility into what they paid to build.

AIMHI Receives the IGNYSIA Award

AIMHI also received the IGNYSIA Award, a special corporate recognition from IGNYSIA Co., Ltd., one of Mindanao TECH PLANTER 2026’s global partners.

The recognition is especially meaningful because IGNYSIA is not a generic corporate sponsor. Formerly Yamada Shokai Holdings, the Nagoya-based group traces its roots to 1906 and has spent 120 years building and maintaining infrastructure that supports everyday life in Japan. Today, the group covers gas, water, electricity, telecommunications and other forms of infrastructure construction and maintenance.

IGNYSIA is also actively working with startups and researchers to bring new technologies into real infrastructure environments. The company says it is pursuing international co-creation across Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore, and offers global startups opportunities to test solutions in real operating fields in Japan’s Tokai region.

That makes the IGNYSIA Award particularly relevant to AIMHI. It is recognition from a Japanese company that understands infrastructure, engineering and field operations — the same broader environment in which AIMHI is trying to improve project visibility and decision-making.

IGNYSIA’s Managing Director and Group CEO, Toyohisa Yamada, also served as a global judge for Mindanao TECH PLANTER 2026. Leave a Nest describes IGNYSIA as a gas engineering and construction company, with Yamada’s work focused on resilience across energy, infrastructure, agriculture, forestry and fisheries, and the living environment.

“For us, this is more than a corporate award. It is a signal that AIMHI’s construction-intelligence approach resonated with an industry player that understands what happens in the field.”

Scaling Construction Intelligence from Mindanao

AIMHI is not starting from zero.

In 2025, we nearly tripled customer growth. Revenue is up 75%, and we are already in early conversations with potential partners in Thailand and Malaysia.

But we also know that technology adoption does not happen simply because a product exists. The industry around it has to be ready.

Through the DTI SUNPH-ADB initiative, AIMHI is helping fellow contractors strengthen the digital skills they need to adopt new technology. Through our education track, we are introducing future architects and engineers to digital construction tools before they enter the industry.

“We’re not just building AIMHI. We’re helping build the ecosystem that allows construction technology to scale.”

That matters because building a strong product is only one part of the challenge. The other part is helping create technology readiness — among today’s contractors and tomorrow’s construction professionals.

From the Philippines to Southeast Asia and Japan

Our beachhead remains the mid-sized Philippine contractor managing multiple projects. But the problem we are solving is not Philippine-only.

Across Southeast Asia, construction teams continue to deal with fragmented information, uneven digital adoption and reactive decision-making. The context may differ from country to country, but the need for earlier, clearer project decisions travels.

That is why TECH PLANTER matters beyond Demo Day. Through Leave a Nest’s Japan-connected network — and now through recognition from IGNYSIA — AIMHI is looking for technology collaborators, industry partners, pilot opportunities, strategic investors and ecosystem partners that can help us deepen the technology and bring it to more markets.

“We built this in Mindanao because we lived it in Mindanao. But fragmented data and reactive decisions aren’t a Mindanao problem alone.”

What AIMHI Is Building Toward

Our vision is simple: every builder should be able to see a problem before it becomes an unnecessary delay, a major cost, or a broken promise to the people waiting for that project.

Construction remains one of the least digitized industries. Changing a legacy industry will not be easy, and technology alone cannot eliminate every inefficiency or every bad practice.

But clarity matters.

Better information makes it easier to act earlier. Better visibility makes it harder for problems to stay hidden. And better decisions can improve how projects — and ultimately communities — move forward.

Winning both the 2026 Mindanao TECH PLANTER Grand Winner Award and the IGNYSIA Award is not the end of that journey. For AIMHI, it is another signal that a problem lived here in Mindanao can become a technology built here in Mindanao — and, with the right partners, a solution that can travel much farther.