Shas­tri Boodan

Rudy Ram­per­sad, Vice Pres­i­dent of Re­gion­al Ini­tia­tives at Ramps Lo­gis­tics is telling young en­tre­pre­neurs to "chase the vi­sion and not the mon­ey." Ram­per­sad was speak­ing at YTEPP Lim­it­ed's Busi­ness Pitch Com­pe­ti­tion at its Ch­agua­nas head of­fice.

He said, “En­tre­pre­neur­ship be­gins with a dream, the right plan and re­sources in place to fu­el that dream.” He said “ Our great­est re­source in T&T is not oil and gas, it is our peo­ple, it is our youths. The youths are the in­no­va­tors and to­day we would be able to see just that.”

Al­so speak­ing at the event was YTEPP Chair­man Tho­ra Best who said the na­tion­al econ­o­my can be built through self-em­ploy­ment.

“Every­body can­not get wage em­ploy­ment and we live in an age where young peo­ple have fan­tas­tic ideas," she said. "Covid has taught us that some of these ideas take off like a rock­et. We didn’t think that some of the busi­ness­es we have now, we didn’t think that we would have them pre-Covid.”

Best lat­er told the me­dia that the com­pe­ti­tion was im­por­tant to build the con­fi­dence of the par­tic­i­pants to con­vince in­vestors. She said YTEPP would be seek­ing to part­ner with oth­er agen­cies to build its brand and get more in­tern­ships for its trainees. The com­pe­ti­tion was won by Atelia James, plac­ing sec­ond and third re­spec­tive­ly were Jen­necia Dalips­ingh-Ramdin and Terk­isha Yor­rick. Con­tes­tants had to pitch their busi­ness­es to a pan­el of three judges who then ques­tioned each par­tic­i­pant about their prod­ucts or ser­vices.