En­tre­pre­neur Kyle Gada­jar has re­ceived $15,000 in seed fund­ing from the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC) af­ter emerg­ing as the top par­tic­i­pant in The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Con­nect Build and Pitch En­tre­pre­neur­ship Train­ing and Pitch Com­pe­ti­tion.

The award was pre­sent­ed at a cer­e­mo­ny held on Fri­day, No­vem­ber 5, at UTC’s head of­fice, where the State-owned fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion marked its Gold Spon­sor­ship of the UWI-led en­tre­pre­neur­ship ini­tia­tive.

The com­pe­ti­tion, launched in Au­gust 2025 through the UWI Con­nect alum­ni en­gage­ment plat­form, tar­get­ed fi­nal-year UWI stu­dents and alum­ni. Par­tic­i­pants com­plet­ed a se­ries of en­tre­pre­neur­ship and busi­ness-plan­ning mod­ules be­fore pitch­ing their ideas to a pan­el of judges drawn from the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors.

UTC Chief Op­er­a­tions Of­fi­cer Natasha Davis said the ini­tia­tive aligned with the in­sti­tu­tion’s in­ter­est in sup­port­ing small busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and in­no­va­tion, not­ing that par­tic­i­pants demon­strat­ed a strong range of com­mer­cial­ly ori­ent­ed ideas.

UWI Act­ing Di­rec­tor of In­sti­tu­tion­al Ad­vance­ment and In­ter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion, Ju­lian Hen­ry, said cor­po­rate sup­port was crit­i­cal to turn­ing aca­d­e­m­ic con­cepts in­to vi­able en­ter­pris­es, adding that the part­ner­ship helped ex­pand the reach and ef­fec­tive­ness of the pro­gramme.

Nine fi­nal­ists ad­vanced to the pitch stage, where pro­pos­als were as­sessed by a judg­ing pan­el that in­clud­ed Lin­da Wil­son-Mano, head of ad­vi­so­ry ser­vices at UTC. Wil­son-Mano said the com­pe­ti­tion high­light­ed the ca­pac­i­ty of young en­tre­pre­neurs to con­tribute to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

Or­gan­is­ers said the UWI Con­nect Build and Pitch Com­pe­ti­tion is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue as an an­nu­al ini­tia­tive aimed at strength­en­ing the re­gion’s en­tre­pre­neur­ial ecosys­tem.