Six entrants are moving into the next round of the Scotiabank Vision Achiever Programme LivePitch 2017 competition, a collaboration with the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI), to promote entrepreneurship locally.
According to a GCCI press release issued earlier today, entrants were required to submit a 60-second video pitch for a new business or expansion of an existing business, which were posted to the Scotiabank Guyana Facebook page for public voting.
The three videos with the most likes were automatic finalists while the judges were tasked with identifying two wildcard picks, not necessarily based on number of votes. Since there were six entries into the competition, it was decided to send all to the final rounds to compete for the $500,000.00 top prize and $250,000.00 runner up prize.
The six finalists are; Guyana Premier, Koko, TREE by Next Generation Great Minds, CWYN’s Domain, Shermol’s Cleaning Services and Freedom2Love Agency.
The businesses competing include an online place for all things Guyanese and a dating/relationship counselling service. The six finalists will commence training with ActionCoach to help them through the next two rounds of the competition.
The next round of the competition requires the finalists to use Scotiabank’s free online Plan Writer tool to prepare a business plan. They will then be required to present their plan on national television for final judging.
The winner and runner up will be announced in the week of September 18, 2017 and will receive a $500,000 and $250,000 start up business account at the Bank, respectively.
The Scotiabank Vision Achiever Programme LivePitch competition is one of the Bank’s initiatives to celebrate Small Business Week which will run from September 18-22 this year. Among the judges are Lance Hinds, CEO of Brainstreet Group; Dr. Rosh Khan CEO of SocialRank Media; Gillian Griffith, Officer in Charge, Small Business Bureau; and Brian Hackett, Scotiabank Branch Manager.
This is the third year for this exciting competition which was first launched in September 2015 during Scotiabank’s celebration of Small Business Week. Previous winners are Wafugee Inc. and Privileged Clothing for 2015 and 2016 respectively.
