Last January was held a training in order to prepare the tutors who will attend the 50 winners of the Business Plan Competition, DESAFIO GB; the formation was designed to enable them to accompany these entrepreneurs and their businesses during the incubation period and acceleration which will last 18 months.
During the first 12 months of the acceleration and incubation period and monthly in the last 6 months, tutors should meet weekly with each of the entrepreneurs. On the follow -up meetings, tutors will support the entrepreneurs in the management of their businesses, purchase and relationship with suppliers, hiring and management of employees, capture and retention of clients, among others.
The group of 50 winners of the Business Plan Competition, DESAFIO GB which was selected by an international panel of judges in September 2017, is composed by 25 entrepreneurs of each genre. The 18 entrepreneurs who do not yet have a business will be integrated into the incubation program of the follow-up program, while the remaining 32 will participate in the acceleration range. The winners' ideas and business will be focused on sectors such as agriculture, telecommunications, education and transport, reflecting pressing needs in Guinea-Bissau and where there is great potential for innovation.
It is hoped that these young entrepreneurs will be able to start or strengthen innovative and sustainable businesses with this training and with the follow-up they are now starting, impacting positively in Guinea-Bissau, not only through the provision of new goods and services and job creation, as well as by the example they can give to other potential entrepreneurs.
The private sector in the country is still incipient, with access to limited and expensive financing; the option for informality is preferred by most Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, thus avoiding paying taxes and supervision. The Business Plan Competition, DESAFIO GB, aims to stimulate the development of this sector not only by motivating, by the example of its winners, the creation of new formal business, but also by facilitating access to finance for MSMEs and a general increase in the support, through the holding of round tables with financial institutions and financiers, focused on reducing the current difficulties in the creation and growth of companies.
Funded by the World Bank, the Business Plan Competition, DESAFIO GB falls within the framework of the Private Sector Rehabilitation and Agroindustrial Development Project and is being implemented by CESO Development Consultants, Expertise, Inovisa and PD Consult consortium. Started in June 2016, the project is expected to last until May 2019.
January 2018.