Scotiabank is giving away $1.5M in this year’s edition of the Vision Achiever Programme Business Plan competition, as part of the Bank’s 50th anniversary celebrations. The Bank today launched the competition, which is a collaboration with the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) to promote entrepreneurship, at the GCCI’s Waterloo Street Boardroom. The competition is open to Guyanese residents, 18 years and over, who are interested in starting a business or have an existing small business which they want to grow. The rules of the competition are as follows. Entrants must:
- Record a one minute video pitch of your business idea and send it via WeTransfer (https://wetransfer.com/) to [email protected] OR
- Record your one minute video pitch using our facilities on the date listed below. Email [email protected] to register for your recording.
- Deadline for submission of videos is April 25, 2018. Entrants must include in the pitch name of entrant; name of business; description of business; what problem the product/service is addressing; financial viability of the business; why persons should vote for this idea.
- The videos will be uploaded to facebook.com/ScotiabankGY by April 30, 2018 for public voting via likes/reactions/positive comments
- Entrants must promote their videos ethically, i.e. by sharing and encouraging persons to share and like/react to their videos.
- Purchasing of likes/reactions will lead to disqualification.
- Public voting will end at 21:00hrs on May 11, 2018 and the top three pitches will go through to the finals along with two wildcards identified by the judges.
- The five finalists will be required to attend business training by ActionCOACH from June to August 2018.
- The five finalists will be required to use Scotiabank’s free online Business Plan Writer tool to prepare a Business Plan during their ActionCOACH sessions (submission deadline August 31, 2018). The tool is accessed at guyana.scotiabank.com under Small Business, Tools and Advice.
- The five finalists will be required to pitch their idea on television to a panel of judges.
- The scores from the Business Plan and the television pitch will be tallied to arrive at the winners.
- Finalists who do not complete the Business Plan and television pitch segments of the competition will have to repay the cost of the ActionCOACH training.
Recording Date:
Mon April 23, 2018 08:00 to 17:00hrs ActionCOACH Guyana, 122 Parade Street, Georgetown.
Last year, Denisha Victor of Koko and Davindra Laltoo and Omesh Balmacoon of Guyana Premier successfully pitched their way to $500,000 and $250,000 respectively from a field of six finalists. The other finalists were New Generation Great Minds, CWYN’s Domain, Shermol’s Cleaning Services and Freedom2Love Agency.
