Another five win N15m Diamond BET6 award

Five successful candidates have emerged N15 million winners of the sixth season of Diamond Bank’s Building Entrepreneur Today (BET6) Award.

At the weekend, Ekanem Emmanuel, Aniete Abraham, Obaro Virtue, Okehi Ogechi and Udeme Okon were selected the winners of the year’s edition of BET6, carting away N3 million each as grant to develop their business, having displayed exceptional entrepreneurial skills and productive business ideas after six month of training.

BET is a partnership between Diamond Bank and Enterprise Development Centre (EDC) of the Pan Atlantic University, which started about six years ago, bringing to a total of 30 successful candidates to date.

According to the Head of Emerging Business of Diamond Bank, Mark Ifashen, both Diamond Bank and EDC were working towards empowering emerging businesses towards becoming a fully grown corporate entity, noting that for six months, 15 candidates successfully screened from multitude of applications were trained intensively on development of both institutional and financial capacity.

He noted that BET6 focused on strategic sectors where candidates were selected from the Agriculture, education, among others, adding that the winners were given the grants with the belief that values will be added to the community through their businesses.

The Chief Executive Officer of Diamond Bank, Uzoma Dozie, in his remarks noted that Diamond Bank was going beyond providing banking services but reaching out to the masses in the area of business and helping actualise their objectives.

“We want to help youths so as to be helped by the youths in return. We have a philosophy of being relevant to our customers beyond borrowing services. We want to see how successful our customers are,” he said.

He noted that the training received by candidates goes beyond the money given, adding that it would give the candidate the needed wings to fly in their businesses.

According to the bank, to participate in the next BET season, a prospective candidate must have an existing business that has been in operation for at least three months prior to the application date. At the end of the initial screening, 50 shortlisted candidates will undergo a six months training programme at the Pan Atlantic University Entrepreneurial Development Centre.

At the completion of the training programme, the best 15 candidates would be selected to undergo a second phase of advisory services where they will be required to present their business models. At the end of the process, the five participants who are adjudged to have the best plans will receive a grant of N3 million each from Diamond Bank to support their businesses.