A total of $800,000 in seed capital was won by 15 “green” micro-businesses that participated in an incubator and accelerator programs run by the Pacific Greenpreneurs Network this year.
The 15 winning businesses were named in a graduation ceremony yesterday.
Implemented by the Suva-based Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) and funded by Qatar Fund for Development, the training programs are designed to provide fledgling greenpreneurs with mentoring, coaching and networking services to help them grow their businesses.
“For the incubator program, which is for early stage businesses or idea stage businesses, at the end of the program we have a business plan competition, in which they submit their video pitch, business plan and impact and financial model. We judge that. We have independent judges who score and we’ll be awarding six recipients as winner of the business plan competition who will each win $US5000 so that’s about $F11,000 each, either to start or expand their business,” GGGI Project Manager Esther Bates said.
“For the accelerator program, these are the more growth-stage businesses. They’re typically larger. They’ve submitted funding proposals and investor pitches. We have gone through the process and we are now able to announce awarding nine payable grants for Fiji accelerator participants. So we’re really excited today to be awarding over $F800,000 in seed an repayable grants to greenpreneurs in Fiji,” Ms Bates said.
A total of 15 businesses were part of the 2023 incubator program while 12 participated in the accelerator program.
Chief guest at the graduation event, Assistant Minister for Finance Esrom Immanuel, said the initiative was good for Fiji.
“We want new businesses, we want new entrepreneurs and we want them to grow. Once they grow, they can grow the economy as well. And you can see that not only are they growing, they’re moving into sustainable areas and green growth investments so that ties in with our development goals moving forward,” Mr Immanuel said.
