The Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (NED­CO) has award­ed com­ple­tion cer­tifi­cates to the first co­hort of grad­u­ates of its busi­ness ac­cel­er­a­tor pro­gramme.

The 12-month pro­gramme was launched to help dri­ve the growth of the lo­cal mi­cro and small en­ter­prise (MSE) sec­tor by fa­cil­i­tat­ing the suc­cess­ful start-up and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of MSEs.

In a state­ment Ned­co said the in­no­v­a­tive and nur­tur­ing pro­gramme is the on­ly lo­cal busi­ness ac­cel­er­a­tor that of­fers a com­pre­hen­sive suite of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment ser­vices of small busi­ness fi­nanc­ing, en­tre­pre­neur­ial train­ing, coach­ing, men­tor­ship, net­work­ing, prod­uct de­vel­op­ment, re­search an­a­lyt­ics and pro­to­typ­ing ser­vices.

The first co­hort of the pro­gramme was run in part­ner­ship with uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges na­tion­wide which rec­om­mend­ed stu­dents who had an ex­ist­ing start-up or were in­ter­est­ed in start­ing a new busi­ness.

A brief cer­tifi­cate dis­tri­b­u­tion func­tion was held for the 17 grad­u­at­ing en­tre­pre­neurs from dif­fer­ent sec­tors of the econ­o­my.

Calvin Mau­rice, Ned­co’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer told the grad­u­ates, “Mi­cro and small busi­ness­es like yours con­tin­ue to play im­por­tant roles in our econ­o­my be­cause you cre­ate em­ploy­ment and con­tribute to the in­no­va­tions aris­ing in many ar­eas, in­clud­ing the busi­ness, tech­nol­o­gy and cre­ative sec­tors.”

He added the pro­gramme would have pro­vid­ed the key busi­ness foun­da­tion and so­lu­tions to help over­come the com­mon chal­lenges that start-ups face in to­day’s world of busi­ness.

Dana La­toya Bobb, founder of the Radix Home­work and Learn­ing Cen­tre, a day­care, preschool and af­ter school cen­tre in Matu­ra, placed third in the Start-up Pitch Com­pe­ti­tion.

Bobb al­so suc­cess­ful­ly piv­ot­ed dur­ing the eco­nom­ic lock­down by bring­ing her busi­ness on­line to con­tin­ue serv­ing her stu­dents.

“The Ned­co busi­ness ac­cel­er­a­tor was in­spi­ra­tional, en­cour­ag­ing, re­source­ful and es­sen­tial to me, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“The Ned­co staff was al­ways com­mit­ted. They pushed and en­cour­aged me to meet my dead­lines, in­no­vate and im­ple­ment new ad­min­is­tra­tive, mar­ket­ing and fi­nan­cial com­po­nents to keep the cen­tre in op­er­a­tion,” she said.

She al­so en­cour­aged oth­er en­ti­ties to take part in this op­por­tu­ni­ty so that their busi­ness­es can grow and make a greater im­pact on the econ­o­my.