Open call for training for women's entrepreneurship, learn how to participate

The Colombian-American Chamber of Commerce, AmCham Colombia, announced that it opened the third call of its Scale Entrepreneurship Program with which it seeks to support and train 20 women's enterprises throughout the country.

The initiative will be developed virtually with the support of PwC Colombia and Gómez-Pinzón Abogados, and aims to provide companies with tools to scale their business models.

“In 2020, we launched the Scale Program in order to accompany Colombian enterprises in the construction of comprehensive and innovative business models with high social, environmental and economic impact. This year, the Program will focus on enterprises that are owned by women, have a woman as a partner or that generate opportunities for economic growth and female employability,” said Samira Alkhatib, director of New Business Development at AmCham Colombia.

According to the association, the ventures will be on the program for ten weeks, where through five phases they can participate in thirteen workshops specializing in topics such as building a powerful value proposition, business models, sales and distribution channels, market characteristics and segmentation, techniques and culture of negotiation, women's leadership and the regulatory framework for entrepreneurship.

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In the same way, participants will have the opportunity to receive one-on-one mentoring from different experts, where they can build their business pitch and put into practice everything they have learned during the workshops. This will lead to them having the necessary skills to present themselves in the final phase of the Program, before an investment round with potential partners and allies.

“The Call for the Scale Program is open from March 17 to April 1 of this year for women's entrepreneurship in all economic sectors and regions of the country. In addition to being owned by women, the other requirement that participating enterprises must meet is the maturity of their business and evidence of their scalability and innovation,” explained Alkhatib.

Those interested in participating in the program can apply for free through the AmCham Colombia website, by locating the Scale Program section. It should be said that according to the guild, in its two previous editions the initiative has managed to benefit at least 40 ventures.

“We had the goal of increasing sales in 2019, which were 300 million, to 500 million in 2020 and to our surprise we managed to close that year with 600 million, so we exceeded expectations even in the midst of the pandemic,” said Manuel Giraldo, representative of Helados Bacatá, an ice cream brand in ice rolls for pets and human consumption, one of the enterprises participating in the first edition of Scale and which, according to information from the guild, thanks to the Programme, managed to double its income.

It was also part of the Mascontrol Consultores program, a consultancy on standards for the export of agro-industrial products that rethought its business model and structured its strategy for the coming years.

“It was a very enriching process for our entrepreneurship to participate in the Scale Program because each of the mentorships allowed us to better define our lines of business, determine the added values we could offer and, even, identify some hidden assets we had within the business,” said Juan Quintero, director administrative office of Mascontrol Consultores.

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