USAID announces financial support to 22 entrepreneur’s projects

ISLAMABAD: United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on Tuesday started financial support to 22 selected entrepreneurs to help them executing various projects including agri-business and processing, hospitality, logistics, textile, light engineering and information technology.

The financial support is being offered in collaboration with The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE) in diverse sectors. USAID under its 5th edition of the Pakistan Start-Up Cup 2018-2019 has distributed financial supports certificates among three entrepreneur’s winners.

“A special session would be conducted with an aim to teach about market strategies, revenue generation and fund raising, adding that it will help businessmen connect to like-Minded Entrepreneurs from their community,” Kevin McClelland from Griffinworx, one of facilitators told APP.

He said top 22 winners would be awarded customized business development support from USAID and will receive Rs 3.2 million as prize money adding that USAID small and medium enterprise activity is a five year USAID-funded programme working with small and medium businesses to contribute to economic growth, job creation, and income generation in Pakistan.

Pakistan Start-up Cup started with a workshop titled “Build a Business”. A series of workshops will be held in different cities across the country Lahore, Karachi, Quetta, Peshawar and Faisalabad. Kevin McCIelland from Griffinworx was the facilitator of the first ‘Build-A-Business’ workshop.

Kevin told APP that the Build-A-Business workshops would be highly practical and would provide first hand information to the participants. He said that programme was designed in a way to facilitate the new entrepreneurs through worldwide steps to start and build a viable business. Kevin added that the company would also train the entrepreneurs about small and medium businesses.

He said that the programme would also focus on learning Business Model Design, which would be helpful to business persons to organize their thoughts and improve their abilities.

He said that through these workshops one would be able to learn about how one can add value to their business and how to reach the targeted customers.