Athena sets up two more PH hubs
Global professional services firm Athena LLC is expanding its presence in the Philippines with two additional offices, driven by the robust demand for highly skilled virtual assistants worldwide.
Kandy White, chief operations officer of Athena, said in a press conference over the weekend that they will open another office in Cebu by the second quarter of 2025 following the launch of their first office in Quezon City this month.
“We’re currently growing rapidly, both here in Quezon [City in Metro Manila] and also at our locations in Cebu,” White told reporters.
The company’s newest four-story building in Quezon City is expected to go operational by the end of February.
According to the company’s records, they already have close to 2,500 employees who are trained as highly skilled virtual assistants dubbed as executive partners or XPs.
White said they plan to onboard more people to further bolster the number of their XPs.
“So our plan is [to build a talent pool of] close to 4,500 in the next two years,” she said.
The COO said they are also planning to build a third hub south of Metro Manila in the future.
David Ford, vice president of capital investments at Athena, said they invested around $2.5 million for their Quezon City office, and will likely fund the other two offices with the same amount at each site.
The United States and Canada are currently the largest markets that Athena is serving today, White said, adding that 70 percent of their clients are located in North America.
“Australia is our second-biggest market and we also have clients in Singapore, South America, Israel, Turkey, the Middle East, Europe, particularly the United Kingdom,” she said.
In terms of sectors with the highest demand for highly skilled virtual assistants, White said that most of their clients are in the startup scene and in finance.
“But we do have a large segment of health care and more tangible things like florists, caterers, event planners, those kinds of folks as well,” White said.
“Our goal is actually to help grow more small businesses because we see a lot of benefits that we can provide for family businesses and small business owners. It’s a $13-billion market,” she added.
