Unit Trust Corporation helps businesses to Scale Up

The Unit Trust Corporation (UTC) has officially launched Scale Up TT, a programme designed to provide business owners with the tools necessary to drive real growth and foster broad-based prosperity.

The initiative was launched during a virtual conference on Friday, led by UTC executive director Nigel Edwards.

The programme is the result of UTC's partnership with US-based Entrepreneurship Policy Advisors (EPA), whose scalerator business accelerator programme has more than 350 participating companies from the Americas, Canada and, now, TT.

EPA executive director Daniel Isenberg also attended the launch, along with Trade and Industry Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon; Wendy Bishop, research manager and Scale Up TT coordinator; and members of the UTC faculty and business leadership team.

During his address, Edwards said: "When we look around our world today, we will all agree that we are witnessing a world that is changing at tremendous pace. A year ago, everything changed with the pandemic and the whole world had to adjust and do so quickly."

He said UTC has precisely that agility to a strategic pillar for the entrepreneurship.

"It was about three years ago when we started a deliberate pivot towards a focus on entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship.

"We saw the potential for a similar period of symbiotic growth between the corporation and entrepreneurs as a sector," Edwards said, adding that UTC also saw the inescapable need to develop a pipeline of investable companies that would enable their own continuous growth.

"When we started that pivot in 2018, one of the first things that we did was that we partnered with other institutions that were similarly motivated. We partnered with Ernst and Young (EY) and sponsored the Emerging Entrepreneur Award, which was a TT Chamber initiative."

Edwards said many of the companies had started as tiny as the ones their own entrepreneurs were running, but had found a "magic formula" for growth – new markets, different logistics and even new facilities.

Since then, he said, UTC has been focused on finding ways to bring scale to local businesses.

"We continued our discussions with a broad set of institutions, including the TT Chamber, UWI, multi-laterals, and in the course of these discussions we met a young man who was super passionate about some programme called Scale Up, Mr Waltnel Sosa," said Edwards.

After discussions, UTC decided to invest in the core technology of scaling up local businesses.

The programme is about putting in place a framework for creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem that caters for a vibrant community of support, leadership, culture, markets and customers.

Edwards said businesses were selected for the programme, from a field of over 1,000, because of their commitment to aggressive growth. The companies in Scale Up come from a diverse range of sectors, including technology, engineering, logistics and food processing.

Last week, UTC hosted an orientation exercise for the participants, to give them a little more insight into the programme and to introduce them to the nuts and bolts of how it will operate.

Minister Gopee-Scoon said the initiative reinforces the vision and work of the government to develop and grow businesses, through a simple and effective methodology that has been replicated across cities and countries worldwide.

She said: "Scale Up TT could not come at a more opportune time. This initiative serves to scale up businesses by encouraging entrepreneurs to be more ambitious with their growth targets, and to guide them through the steps necessary to turn that desire for growth into reality by focusing on the three Cs — customers, capacity and cash."

Gopee-Scoon congratulated the UTC on delving into the business of entrepreneurship.

"There is no question that firms of varying sizes have been hit hard by the covid19 pandemic. Businesses have had to contend with reduced demand, disrupted supply chains and shrinking access to finance in some instances," she said.

Research from the World Economic Forum (WEF) has shown it is the relatively high-growth firms, called “scale ups”, that are the real generators of jobs, taxes and wealth.

For Latin America and the Caribbean, the WEF indicates governments should focus less on the creation of new businesses and prioritise helping firms of all ages, sectors and sizes to grow.

A WEF study shows that ten to 20 per cent of existing businesses in any region already have the ability to develop the entrepreneurial mindset, business experience, customer base and operational skills to double their growth rates.

"This growth helps more than just the business, it also spreads prosperity deep into the community. If more and more local companies grow more rapidly, our economy will also expand," said Gopee-Scoon.

While conglomerates are key to driving exports and promoting TT’s brand overseas, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) do have a substantially positive impact on the domestic economy in that they contribute 28 per cent to the country’s GDP, they account for 91 per cent of all registered businesses and employ approximately 200,000 people.

"If we are to realise change, there is a need for each component to actively participate in the process. Each entity must walk the talk and actually invest in and help give shape, to the ideas and activities of entrepreneurs, if this local entrepreneurship ecosystem is to be successful," she said.

"I applaud the UTC for investing in our entrepreneurs and businesses, which is a step in the right direction if TT is to evolve from being the industrial lead in the region, to the ideas and entrepreneurial capital of the region."