A new “traDigital” company backed by the 917Ventures Retirement Fund is set to revolutionize the Philippine entertainment industry with the launch of KROMA Entertainment Inc.

KROMA brings together passionate content and experienced creators, the best talent, and innovative technology to produce fresh and engaging entertainment for the Filipino audience. KROMA offers entertainment for all across screens and formats, be it high-quality films, series, TV shows, music, digital content, or events.

The Globe Group is going full-scale into entertainment with KROMA, expanding its earlier venture into live events, production, publishing and music with what was then called Globe Entertainment (GENT).

Likewise rebranded, Globe Studios has spun off its businesses: ANIMA continues to produce award-winning and critically-acclaimed films, series and podcasts, while SECRET MENU, a full-service production house, creates branded content and television commercials.

KROMA likewise takes charge of music label PARADISE RISING, in partnership with international label 88Rising, to champion Filipino talent on the global stage. KROMA’s video-on-demand platform UPSTREAM has been home to the latest films, series and events for Filipinos everywhere.

NYMA focuses on pushing talent growth across the company's network of partners and clients. PIE, a partnership with ABS-CBN and BEAM digital television network and supported by 917Ventures, is a multi-platform, real-time, interactive entertainment channel. It provides memorable and rewarding experiences, prizes and connections for and with Filipinos.

Rounding up the KROMA roster are Wonder, a pop culture and style platform, and FreebieMNL, everyone’s destination for the latest news and deals on food and lifestyle.

Globe supports the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly UN SDG No. 9, highlighting the roles of infrastructure and innovation as crucial drivers of economic growth and development. It is committed to upholding the UN Global Compact principles and contributing to 10 UN SDGs.

MANILA, Philippines, April 11, 2022 – Global-Estate Resorts, Inc. (GERI), the Philippines’ leading developer of master-planned integrated tourism estates and a subsidiary of Megaworld, posted consolidated revenues of P5.0-billion for full-year 2021. Meanwhile, the company’s total net income increased by 15% year-on-year to P1.5-billion from P1.3-billion previously. The company’s income attributable to parent company’s shareholders likewise grew by 21% year-on-year to P1.3-billion from the previous year’s P1.1- billion.

Real estate sales contributed the lion’s share of revenues, registering a 3% increase to P3.7-billion as compared to the year before, in line with the expansion in construction activity. Real estate sales for the fourth quarter of 2021 alone came in at P1.0-billion, 49% higher than the same period last year.

In 2021, GERI continued to bank on the strong demand for leisure developments, with reservation sales growing by 25% year-on-year to P17.2-billion. Boracay Newcoast led the company’s property sales with P4.1-billion worth of projects sold in 2021. This was followed closely by Eastland Heights and Alabang West, which registered sales amounting to P3.6-billion and P3.4-billion, respectively. The rest of GERI’s offerings also registered strong demand with Arden Botanical Estate, Southwoods City, and Twin Lakes combining for P5.0-billion in sales during the year.

“For 2021, we continued to capitalize on the strong demand for properties in the provinces. Aside from the intrinsic attractiveness of owning a place that allows you to commune more closely with nature, the past couple of years also highlighted the potential of owning real estate as an investment. In fact, the underlying land values for our offerings continued to appreciate at a brisk pace in spite of the pandemic,” says Monica T. Salomon, president, GERI.

On the other hand, the company’s leasing revenues declined by 34% year-on-year to P409-million as consumer confidence remained subdued for the majority of 2021.

Revenue from hotel operations also declined by 27% to P146-million in 2021 from P201-million in the previous year as a result of prevailing travel restrictions. However, the relaxing of restrictions in the fourth quarter of 2021 led to a resurgence in bookings, resulting to a 231% increase in quarterly hotel revenue to P78-million versus the preceding quarter.

MR.DIY, your one-stop-shop for home improvement, is with the entire globe in celebrating April as Earth Month!

This month-long celebration encourages the public to learn and practice sustainability to make the world a better place, and MR.DIY has exciting items to offer for Filipinos who are looking into contributing to this ongoing cause for the environment.

Glass Storage Jar

Glass Storage Jars have become a symbol for zero waste movement, and for all the good reasons. These glass jars from MR.DIY are incredibly useful, a great eco-friendly alternative from single use plastic containers, and can be used as storage for your everyday food items.

Need to get into a tight spot to clean? MR.DIY's bottle brush set is the perfect zero-waste tool for the job. Great for tall bottles, baby bottles, and even coffee pots.

Bottle brushes are essential because they can reach deep into the bottle of deep objects such as non-dishwasher safe glassware. This helpful item can help you clean a variety of bottles, from small baby containers to tall tumblers.

Whether you’re storing pantry staples or leftovers, food containers from MR.DIY will be perfect for any occasion! Food containers play the most crucial role in ensuring food safety. They protect the food from contamination, improve the shelf life of the product, and maintain the freshness of the food items. 

MR.DIY's kitchen towels are ideal for achieving your waste-free cooking area. This reusable towel is a fantastic alternative to disposable paper towels and is a great sustainable housewarming gift for a friend's new home. These cloths can also be used as hand and face napkins.

Dustbin and Eco-friendly Garbage Bag

Having dustbins and garbage bags in the corners of your house keep your home cleaner and safer for the family! Garbage bags are useful for messy or wet trash, such as food waste, and they can also be used to wrap garbage in order to reduce odor. And with MR.DIY’s eco-friendly material, your zero-waste lifestyle continues.

These five items, among many others that can help you continue your zero-waste journey, are now available at MR.DIY’s stores nationwide!

To learn more about MR.DIY and its products, visit www.mrdiy.com/ph. You may also follow /mrdiyPH on Facebook, and @mrdiy.philippines on Instagram and Tiktok for updates and upcoming promos.

 About MR.DIY

MR D.I.Y. is the largest home improvement retailer with more than 2,000 stores across Southeast Asia including Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Philippines, Cambodia, India, and Europe in Turkey and Spain. The home improvement retailer has dedicated itself to making a positive difference in the lives of its valued customers by offering convenience at all its stores nationwide.

All MR. D.I.Y. stores are managed directly and the company often works in collaboration with other mass merchandise retailers or owners of malls or shopfront properties. MR. D.I.Y. stores offer a wide selection of — approximately 18,000 SKUs — across 5 major categories, namely hardware; household and furnishing; electrical; stationery and sports equipment products; and others (comprising amongst others toys, car accessories, jewellery, and cosmetics).

The company strives to put customers first by operating an innovative business that is flexible when it comes to providing a wide variety of products, good quality, and value-for-money, holding true to the Company’s motto of “ALWAYS LOW PRICES”.

Running in Cebu is finally back!

And it's for a worthy cause.  

Buoyed by its ardent desire to help breathe life back into the Cebu economy, RC Goldline will be staging a Half Marathon 2022 Recovery Run on April 24 at the Cebu Business Park.

Official Media Launch: (L-R) Teresa Dela Cruz, Philippine Retailers Association (Cebu Chapter) Secretary, Christian Paro-an, RC Goldline President, Joel Juarez, Race Director and Nevin Bigornia, Director for Business for JCI Metro Cebu Uptown

Held in partnership with the Philippine Retailers Association (PRA)-Cebu Chapter, it's the first actual run in the province in over two years with lots of exciting prizes up for grabs.

"As we all know, we're now in Alert Level 1 status wherein government restrictions have been eased out already. The situation is slowly getting back to normal and I believe this is one effective way to encourage people to go out," said RC Goldline President Christian Paro-an, who is also the incoming president of the PRA-Cebu Chapter.

Composed of all the major players in the local retail industry, the PRA establishes various programs to help retailers become globally competitive and make the Philippines the new shopping destination in Asia.

"We actually have two purpose here, to run for our health and for the economy of Cebu. Business has not been good the past years. Like everyone else, we have been badly hit by the pandemic plus the devastation of typhoon Odette. It's high time for us to recover and this is our own little way of pushing for the economic recovery of Cebu," Paro-an continued.

The Recovery Run, which is also supported by the Metro Cebu Uptown Jaycees, features the 3K, 6K, 12K and 21K distances.

Over P30,000 in cash prize will be given away to the winners, although in the 12K and 21K categories only. The top three male and female finishers in the 12K will pocket P1,500, P1,200 and P1,000, respectively, while the top three in the 21K will take home P3,000, P2,500 and P2,000.

"I'm inviting all organizations and sectoral groups to support this event regardless of their affiliations. Everybody is welcome to join. What's important is that they are running to support the economy of Cebu," said Paro-an. "The more the merrier. So let's run for our health. Let's run for our recovery. Let's run forward as one people."

The organizers are making sure that all health and safety protocols will be strictly followed including the implementation of the "no vaccine, no run" policy.

Registration fee is pegged at P350 for the 3K, P500 for the 6K, P600 for the 12K, and P700 for the 21K inclusive of a souvenir shirt, race bib, finisher's medal and certificate, post-race refreshments and a chance to win exciting prizes in the raffle draw.

For registration and further information, one may visit RUNNR at Ayala Center Cebu.

With so much entry level and budget smartphones to choose from in the market today, you just have to look for that Wow factor and have a keen eye which from them stands out. Parents wanting to buy gadgets for their kids for educational purposes or Newly hired folks that is looking for reliable gadget that they can use to make their daily task complete with ease, SAMSUG Galaxy A03 might be the gadget partner that you're looking for.

Samsung Galaxy A03 Unboxing

The box comes with the contents: one Samsung Galaxy A03 unit, ~8W Autovolt Travel Adapter Charger, Micro USB cable, SIM/Storage tray pin, Quick Start Guide/Manual and Samsung Care+ booklet. I have the unboxing video uploaded on our new YouTube channel that you may watch, see below video:

Samsung Galaxy A03 Unboxing: Travel charge adaptor and Micro USB cable

Samsung Galaxy A03 Unboxing: Charger with start guides

Samsung A03 Selfie camera and waterdrop notch

Samsung A03 bottom bezel where the 3.5mm audio jack, micro usb port and Dolby atmos speaker output is located.

Sim and storage tray at the right side of Galaxy A03

Back of Samsung A03 black color with plastic matte finish and crisscross pattern.

Battery Longevity

First to consider. With the advent of mobility, battery life is a factor for someone who with a goal to complete daily task with ease. Even if you say you have the best power bank in your bag, still a phone battery that can accompany you throughout your class schedule or full office day is a must. The Galaxy A03 has a 5,000mAh battery life, which in normal usage of checking messages on social media could last you the whole day. I have not tried performing content creation on this one but I'm with this battery capacity it can at least cope up until you delivery the content that you plan.

Storage expandable upto 1TB

There are three internal storage variants available: 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB, and they are all expandable up to 1TB, providing more space for important files and even videos, games, and personal apps.

Camera

The dual-camera combo composed of the 48MP main camera and 2MP depth lenses enable users to create content, fulfill home-study or work from home tasks. The depth camera can adjusts the background and foreground focus for that artistic blur. Selfies can be descent when using the the 5MP front camera whic has the bokeh effect.

Samsung A03 Camera has modes that you can use when in different situations or purpose such as: 

• Portrait - with Blur levels up to 7points
• Photo - with 3:4,  9:16, 1:1 and Full resolutions plus the 48 Megapixel 3:4
• Video - with 9:16, Full and 1:1 resolutions and two options of video format FHD 30 Frames per Second (fps) and HD 30 fps, it's zoom capability can be up to 10x
• Pro Mode - with ISO, White Balance and Aperture settings.
• Panorama - landscape mode
• Food - with 3:4,  9:16, 1:1 and Full resolutions, a blur and Tint controls.
• Night - with 3:4,  9:16, 1:1 and Full resolutions, timer options and zoom up to 10x
• Hyperlapse - a non-stationary timelapse with 4x, 8x, 16x and 32x options

Also options on Deco Pic of pre downloaded Masks and Stamp to use on your photo.

Here are samples of the Pictures that I have taken using the Samsung Galaxy A03. I didn't took technical pictures that tested all the modes and features of the Samsung Galaxy A03. I have the following Straight-Out-of-Camera (SOOC) pictures taken in Auto Mode:

I also tried Samsung Galaxy A03 48 Megapixels Photo Mode, the file that it created is around 16Megabytes (16MB):

Pocessor

Galaxy A03 sports the UNISOC T606 Octa-Core (2xA75 1.6 GHz + 6xA55 1.6 GHz) chipset enabling performance expected for entry level smartphones. For Study at home students, it can give justice on data processing apps essential to satisfy your schooling requirements. For Work from home new hires, I haven't tested it at full multi-tasking multiple windows on how it would respond to the resource hungry tasks, if you happen to perform at that level, please let us know in the comments below.

Price

The Galaxy A03 price depends on RAM and storage capacity, here's the price list:

• Galaxy A03 (3+32GB) - PHP 5,490 SRP
• Galaxy A03 (4+64GB) - PHP 6,490 SRP
• Galaxy A03 (4+128GB) - PHP 7,490 SRP

Conclusion

I agree that this phone is for the Students and fresh graduates, a bang for their buck. With its SRP 5,490-7,490 pesos it is packed with features that they can use for school, work, and even their downtime. The Samsung Galaxy A03 remains to be the top choice in the budget category because of its must wanted features at prices within reach. What do you think?