Twenty-two Guyanese startup founders with great ideas in science, technology and agriculture have been shortlisted as the new cohort of Venture Fellows for the 2022-23 Guyana Innovation Prize programme.
Launched in 2018, the Guyana Innova-tion Prize is an annual, nine-month-long programme, offered by !nnovate Guyana and funded exclusively by the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GTT). The Innovation Prize programme offers expert international business coaching, technical support, and capital that help build upon and improve the Fellows’ efforts to have commercially viable ideas brought to fruition, a release from GTT and !nnovate Guyana said.
The stand-out Venture Fellows who joined the programme in July 2022 are Master Grillers Charcoal Briquettes by Euclid Samuels; Geometry Tiferet Ugdala LLC by Gavin Palmer; Interlocking Construction Bricks by Abdul Subhan; Created Hands-Created Things by Verlyn Collins; Bringgy by Jay Carter; Vaxxil by Andrew Garnett; Dragonfly Geospatial by Brian Smith; Bug Feeds by Sarwan Scarce; Andy Investment Company by Quinn Smith; Click-n-Learn by Anthony Wills; Ctxog Design by Sean Griffith; Innovation for All by Feiasie Baksh; FemCare by Jaya Edwards; the Moringa Shop by Issac Safi; Infinity Power FDAP by Jamal Farley; Anahata Inc. by Kelly Brassington; CME Prep by Raule Williams; Fizuro Inc. By Dorwin Kingston; GuyMart by Shaquille Moseley; Tamarindus Indica by Dwayne Harris; To Go Services by Albert Jessemy; Urban Agriculture by Neisha Vantrompe and Biomaterials by Isidro Ubaldo Espinosa.
Since its launch, the release said that the programme has trained and coached over 50 Guyanese scientists, technologists and agriculturists, and has awarded eight of these with US$10,000 each to scale their ideas.
Oslene Carrington, CEO of the Guyana Economic Development Trust (GEDT), the company under which !nnovate Guyana operates, said that the prize was created to fill the gap between ordinary Guyanese who have breakthrough ideas and the opportunities to bring real and new products to market.
“From our perspective, there are no barriers to innovating new, commercially viable ideas. This programme has been designed to support “innovation for all,” which is in keeping with one of GTT’s brand pillars,” Carrington said.
This year’s cohort began the Innovation Prize programme in July 2022 with 31 shortlisted Venture Fellows.
GTT’s Senior Manager – PR and Corporate Communication, Jasmin Harris said the company is impressed with the entries from the previous years and is excited about the new ideas from this cohort.
In January 2023, the release said that the Guyana Innovation Prize programme finalists will be announced. From there, the four Fellows with the most commercially viable products will each receive US$10,000 at the annual award ceremony in April 2023, the release said.
