BUSINESS owners who make up the fourth cohort of UTC’s Scale Up programme have been given a chance to pitch their businesses to one of the biggest investors in the country – the government.

This opportunity arose at the welcoming ceremony of the Scale Up programme, at the UTC’s head office on Independence Square.

Trade Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon and UTC chief operations officer Natasha Davis listened as entrepreneurs described their businesses and how they plan to scale up.

Making the pitch

The businesses in the fourth cohort come from several different areas, including entertainment, security, agro-processing, tech and even the funeral industry.

Each of the businesses sought to expand through the scalerator programme.

Reshma Advani-Rojas managing director of Advance Commercial Equipment, a supplier of commercial equipment for hotels, restaurants, bakeries, supermarkets and janitorial companies, said while the business started from humble beginnings, it is now the leader in the southern Caribbean for commercial food service.

She said, with the help of the Advance Commercial team and stakeholders such as UTT and the Trade Ministry, she plans to take the business further, promoting TT cuisine and culture through initiatives such as the Forge – a culinary film studio – where food brands can film and photograph content for promotions.

“I think while the country has looked at outside expertise in order to do these things, what Advance is trying to do is not just build up the hospitality sector, through programmes like Scale Up and with the support of the UTT and the Ministry of Trade, but by making a network of individuals who actually look forward to growing with us, whether it be in hospitality the ministry or outside,” she said.

Maj (retired) Dirk Barnes, CEO of Air Support Tactical Security, said his company specialises in telematics, geomatics and asset retrieval.

“In other words, we recover stolen vehicles,” he said.

The company started in 2016. Barnes said the company uses the expertise of highly trained retirees from the security services along with innovative systems to track and recover assets.

In his pitch, he described to the minister how crime has affected several people and how through coming together, citizens can stop criminals in their tracks.

“In 2018 I had a police officer whose vehicle was stolen around 2 am and we recovered it at around six.

“Back in the pandemic, we had an employee of Air Support Tactical whose vehicle was also stolen, and we recovered that at just around six as well.

“Last month, there was a young lady, a mother of two, whose car was stolen, and we recovered that one around 7am. What was interesting, though, is that lady had to interact with the police officers and our sergeants at the station and when she came back to us and we were talking, we realised that the officer who noticed that the car was moving on the map and the officer at the station were the two people whose cars we recovered before. That just showed to me that we were on the right tr