It’s not always about the money when you think ‘how can I encourage entrepreneurship?’

Helping entrepreneurs to achieve their dreams can often be through something seemingly simple, even basic, like offering a space for a few hours. Sometimes, the most impactful support comes from a genuine, proactive interest in seeing entrepreneurial culture in T&T flourish.

That was the key takeaway for bmobile, when the company responded to a request to accommodate a group of entrepreneurs who needed an appropriate place to conduct a programme facilitated by Youth Business Trinidad & Tobago (YBTT) which was made necessary because of the constraints of COVID-19.

According to Gerard Cooper, General Manager Shared Services at TSTT, “bmobile has always recognized the value and importance of programmes like this one facilitated by YBTT which offer training and support to young, micro and small entrepreneurs.”

Apart from these and many other initiatives, TSTT supports entrepreneurship every single day. Mr. Cooper explained: “We know our technology, products and services are being widely used by budding and thriving entrepreneurs throughout the country and we are ready to work with them to devise new, and tweak existing, solutions to support their business plans and entrepreneurial vision.”

He added: “Hyper flexible and scalable, our communications technology gives SMEs and entrepreneurs the same access to data centre/cloud computing, security, data networking, broadband, smart devices, IP-PBX, and other services as any large company would have.”

Praising bmobile for the role they played in making the activity happen, co-founder of Launch RockIt and now Head of Innovation at Agostini’s Limited, Gerard Thomas, who is supporting YBTT for this initiative, said: “bmobile’s intervention on this was so critical. What could have been perceived as a headache and inconvenience to ensure the activity was conducted safely, with strict adherence to public health guidelines, did not deter bmobile. They recognised the value of the programme which is aimed at entrepreneurial development. They empathized with the constraints being faced by the entrepreneurs and they certainly came through for us.”

He would like to see more of corporate T&T become aware of some of the under utilised resources they possess that they could share with budding entrepreneurs, at negligible cost, a little planning and some inconvenience. That seemingly small contribution could make a game changing difference in building a dynamic entrepreneurial culture and increasing the number of successful entrepreneurs in T&T, Thomas said.

Post-Covid, he hopes to see the introduction and spread of co-working spaces in T&T, as already exists across the United States. He explained: “When entrepreneurs sit around each other, there are a lot of synergies and information that is shared…it’s an example of when one plus one equals 3."