Women expand into non-traditional sectors

Shas­tri Boodan

More fe­male en­tre­pre­neurs are en­ter­ing non-tra­di­tion­al ar­eas of the ser­vice in­dus­try, ac­cord­ing to Na­talya Ra­hamat­u­la, SME Re­source Cen­tre Strat­e­gy Of­fi­cer at JMMB Group.

Ra­hamat­u­la spoke with Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day dur­ing a grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny for par­tic­i­pants of the com­pa­ny’s POwHER­ful pro­gramme, held at JMMB Group’s Ch­agua­nas head of­fice.

She ex­plained that the event marked the com­ple­tion of a six-month ini­tia­tive in­volv­ing eight women-led busi­ness­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

She said, “The theme of the pro­gramme is ‘her life, her wealth, her busi­ness’. The idea is to help par­tic­i­pants build their busi­ness­es around these ar­eas.”

Ra­hamat­u­la said par­tic­i­pants re­ceived sup­port ser­vices, in­clud­ing ac­cess to JMMB fi­nan­cial so­lu­tions, coach­ing, and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment tools to help them scale and grow their en­ter­pris­es.

Through the pro­gramme, par­tic­i­pants al­so opened bank ac­counts, ac­cessed loans, and es­tab­lished in­vest­ment ac­counts with a min­i­mum start­ing de­posit of TT$1,000.

She stressed the im­por­tance of sup­port­ing women in busi­ness and point­ed to their con­tri­bu­tion to the small and medi­um-sized en­ter­prise sec­tor.

She said, “When you as­sist a woman-led busi­ness, you are al­so help­ing com­mu­ni­ties and na­tions, as women oc­cu­py a unique po­si­tion in so­ci­ety as moth­ers, sis­ters, teach­ers and friends.”

Now in its third year, the pro­gramme has main­tained a strong track record, with all busi­ness­es from pre­vi­ous co­horts still in op­er­a­tion. Ra­hamat­u­la said many of these en­ter­pris­es have grown in­to the small and medi­um-sized seg­ments, demon­strat­ing mea­sur­able fi­nan­cial progress and, in some cas­es, re­gion­al ex­pan­sion.

She high­light­ed one par­tic­i­pant, a re­tail en­tre­pre­neur who has ex­pand­ed re­gion­al­ly and is now mov­ing in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing her own line of prod­ucts, with sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue growth.

Ra­hamat­u­la said that while many women con­tin­ue to op­er­ate with­in the ser­vice sec­tor, there is a grow­ing pres­ence in non-tra­di­tion­al fields. While some par­tic­i­pants are in­volved in ar­eas such as food and bev­er­age, hair and beau­ty ser­vices, oth­ers have moved in­to less con­ven­tion­al in­dus­tries.

She said, “One of the par­tic­i­pants in this co­hort owns a garage, pro­vid­ing ve­hi­cle main­te­nance and in­spec­tion ser­vices.”

Look­ing ahead, Ra­hamat­u­la said the pro­gramme plans to ex­pand its in­take to ten par­tic­i­pants an­nu­al­ly, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ac­com­mo­dat­ing more as the JMMB team grows.