The Branson Centre on Wednesday graduated their latest batch of Caribbean entrepreneurs from their six- month acceleration programme, wherein a total of 25 entrepreneurs were intensely trained to become certified business leaders in the Caribbean small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) ecosystem.

Speaking at their second annual Summit held under the theme ‘Scaling for impact’, the entity unveiled its cohort of graduates which was narrowed down from a pool of 400-plus applications from across the Caribbean. The centre said applicants were rigorously vetted before selection, thereafter becoming fully prepared and equipped to get them on the path to scale for impact.

Lisandra Rikards, outgoing CEO for the Branson Centre, who makes way for her successor Lauri-Ann Ainsworth, said that in training their clients they were cognisant of the impact that scaling can have on people, the planet as well as profits.

PROVEN’s head of Marketing and Communication, Belinda Williams in endorsing her company’s sponsorship of what is being done at the Branson Centre, especially from the programmes offered, deemed the trainings as vital, as people should always seek to reinvent themselves whilst injecting more energy and resources so as to move to the next level.

“PROVEN was one of the first corporate entities to align and join like-minded patrons in advancing the objectives of the Branson Centre of entrepreneurship for the Caribbean with the realisation that entrepreneurship is important. It has the ability to improve standards of living and create wealth; not only for the entrepreneurs themselves but also for the related business’s coupled with the well known fact that entrepreneurs also help to drive change with innovation, thereby creating new and improved products and enabling new markets to be developed.

“Our primary focus was to see this ability staunchly fulfilled, to create a dynamic Caribbean — led by Jamaica of course, with highly qualified globally relevant entrepreneurs, and equip them with the radical ability for change and growth,” she said.

During the summit certificates of completion were presented to the entrepreneurs by Branson’s Entrepreneur Programme Director Dmitri Dawkins. The batch was segmented by the cohorts of winter, summer and the blue economy (having to do with the earth and environment) and included the following companies: Elevate Media, Info Exchange Ltd, Candy Craze, Miss T’s Kitchen, Spaces Jamaica, Shavout Foods, Digital Global Marketing, DCI Solutions, AllTechBiz Concepts and Vision, Knightfox App Design, Liquid Light Digital, Particular Presence Technologies, TORC Auto World, Whiterain Publishing, If Walls Could Talk, Chocolate Dreams, Yardie Environmental and Conservation, The Cove Coolout Restaurant and Bar, and JA Bioplastics.