It is im­por­tant to in­vest in start­up busi­ness­es to help them com­pete in a tech-dri­ven econ­o­my.

That’s ac­cord­ing to iQor vice pres­i­dent Dr William Hug­gins who was speak­ing at one of the pan­els at  (THIS) last week.

Hug­gins said it would great­ly as­sist if start­up busi­ness­es can get men­tor­ship on how to run their busi­ness­es and al­so learn about in­vest­ing.

He in­di­cat­ed that Am­cham T&T has the abil­i­ty and the re­sources of link­ing acad­e­mia with the pri­vate sec­tor, which can help grow start-ups.

Hug­gins sug­gest­ed that just like the Tech Hub, which is held an­nu­al­ly, a tech chal­lenge with star­tups, should be con­sid­ered.

“The tech chal­lenge would be pitch­ing for an­gel in­vestors and maybe from the same di­as­po­ra or maybe from lo­cal in­vestors. But you cre­ate that fo­rum to give them that high­light. How do we ex­pose per­sons? I think we may have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do that here. If we can get one win from that, that’s one more start­up that can cre­ate an in­dus­try and let’s start do­ing some­thing like that,” he said.

Co-founder & CEO of Orb­tron­ics, Sher­gaun Rosarie, speak­ing on the pan­el, said while it is good to think about the aca­d­e­m­ic as­pect, an­oth­er an­gle to look at is how liq­uid­i­ty can in­crease in the mar­ket to make it eas­i­er for the ven­ture land­scape and in­crease ac­tiv­i­ty a bit more.

“I think there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty, by en­gag­ing the di­as­po­ra and even ne­go­ti­at­ing a com­mit­ment from them and find­ing out the firms that they might in­vest in for some of these ear­li­er stage com­pa­nies.

“For ex­am­ple, when you do have these ear­ly-stage com­pa­nies when you’re in­vest­ing at, like, a pre-seed or seed stage and you’re try­ing to think of, how can I get my mul­ti­ple at my se­ries A or se­ries B or what­ev­er, the chal­lenge is that there is no liq­uid­i­ty in the mar­ket. Is there a pos­si­bil­i­ty that through the di­as­po­ra you can get that liq­uid­i­ty that you might need for those in­vest­ments at the se­ries A, or se­ries B round that may make it more at­trac­tive for an in­vestor pre-seed or seed round and that then builds your fly­wheel to kind of spool that in­vest­ment ecosys­tem and that con­tin­ues to dri­ve in­no­va­tion in the re­gion,” Rosarie ex­plained.

He said in his home­town St Lu­cia there are a lot of busi­ness­es that col­lab­o­rate and be­lieves that is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent for en­tre­pre­neurs to win.

“It’s a case where you need a cham­pi­on that is able to show peo­ple that to­geth­er we can go fur­ther. Of­ten­times peo­ple might feel like, if two of us are do­ing the same ser­vice, this per­son is au­to­mat­i­cal­ly my com­peti­tor. But show­ing them that, maybe we’re do­ing the same ser­vice, now we can com­pete on larg­er con­tracts. Some­times you re­al­ly need to sell that vi­sion, and I think St Lu­cia is mov­ing in that di­rec­tion for sure,” he men­tioned.

Out­lin­ing the en­vi­ron­ment in Ja­maica, Dmitri Dawkins, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Graft Ven­tures and com­mer­cial di­rec­tor of MC Sys­tems at Graft Ven­tures, not­ed that the col­lab­o­ra­tion is in­creas­ing as peo­ple now re­alise that,  there’s a much big­ger pie than they can go for by them­selves. And that al­so ap­plies re­gion­al­ly with re­gards to col­lab­o­rat­ing across the re­gion to make use of the very small de­mo­graph­ics.  

“We can use an ex­am­ple like Se­prod Ja­maica, which has been do­ing ma­jor re­gion­al ex­pan­sion, and I think it’s some­thing that’s go­ing to con­tin­ue to hap­pen, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able eco­nom­i­cal­ly right now.

“What was the sec­ond part of the ques­tion?  Past the col­lab­o­ra­tion?  How do we build more trust to col­lab­o­rate?  Trans­paren­cy. That’s the main thing in Ja­maica, what boost­ed a lot of trans­paren­cy on the small and medi­um lev­el was be­cause of the Ju­nior Stock Ex­change, and so peo­ple start­ed putting in bet­ter gov­er­nance prac­tices and com­pli­ance and things like that.  I think the same thing will ap­ply as we scale in­ter­na­tion­al­ly,” Dawkins dis­closed.

He point­ed out that his cus­tomers with­in the Caribbean ask about da­ta com­pli­ance doc­u­ments to trust the com­pa­ny.

“I think trans­paren­cy and com­pli­ance  is ul­ti­mate­ly what’s go­ing to lead to that,” said Dawkins.

Hug­gins chimed in, say­ing the same thing about trans­paren­cy and com­pli­ance is hap­pen­ing in the Busi­ness Process Out­sourc­ing (BPO) in­dus­try even though the com­pa­ny is the largest BPO op­er­a­tor in the coun­try.

How­ev­er, Hug­gins said what the com­pa­ny has  re­alised is that as it pitch­es for big­ger busi­ness out in the world, the first thing they are asked is, Who is Trinidad? Where is Trinidad? They do not know about Trinidad.  

“Is that part of Ja­maica? That’s the kind of thing you hear. For us to grow, our mar­ket needs to grow. Our com­peti­tors, big com­peti­tors, have to come here as well be­cause you have some huge com­peti­tors. If those clients know that those huge com­peti­tors are here, they say, ‘Oh, if they are here, well, yeah, we’re com­ing too’.

“We have to find a way in terms of how do you co­op­er­ate and con­sol­i­date and work and the trans­paren­cy things come in be­cause my­self and Sek­ou are talk­ing even­tu­al­ly we’ll have to have a BPO as­so­ci­a­tion in Trinidad, where we share knowl­edge. Be­cause at the end of the day, its our con­cept,” he de­tailed.

Am­cham T&T’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ni­rad Tewarie dur­ing the two-day con­fer­ence, said the tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor is a pow­er­ful tool for eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

“Let’s take in­spi­ra­tion from places like In­dia, where the tech sec­tor is boom­ing. We be­lieve T&T can al­so be po­si­tioned as a cen­tre of ex­cel­lence in niche ar­eas of tech­nol­o­gy, at­tract­ing both for­eign and do­mes­tic in­vest­ment. We’re al­ready see­ing growth in call cen­tres, fin­tech, health tech, and more ad­vanced back-of­fice ser­vices like ac­count­ing and fi­nance. But we must push fur­ther–and high­er–in­to the tech val­ue chain,” he high­light­ed.

Tewarie out­lined that as a skilled di­as­po­ra, Trin­bag­o­ni­ans are in lead­ing roles in ma­jor tech firms abroad and many of them want to give back.  

“But we need poli­cies, like a dig­i­tal no­mad visa, to al­low them to live and con­tribute here in mean­ing­ful ways,” he added.