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Monday, May 12, 2025

Trini inventor finds success on Planting Seeds

by

20160904

Ke­van Sinanan walked on­to the set of Plant­i­ng Seeds anx­ious­ly clench­ing an in­ven­tion he had en­gi­neered in his garage, a gad­get made to match keys to their re­spec­tive locks faster.

He stood in po­si­tion, took a breath, and calm­ly made his pitch. Not on­ly was he brave­ly shar­ing his vi­sion with a pan­el of in­vestors, but he al­so knew in the back of his mind that very soon the en­tire Caribbean re­gion would be watch­ing his pitch on tele­vi­sion.

Even so, fear of fail­ure didn't hold him back as he con­fi­dent­ly ex­plained his prod­uct and its func­tion­al­i­ties.

Dur­ing Sinanan's pitch, Joseph Ra­hael, di­rec­tor of Am­era Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Lim­it­ed, sat on the Plant­i­ng Seeds pan­el of in­vestors, watch­ing and lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly.

Giv­en Ra­hael's back­ground in re­al es­tate and land de­vel­op­ment, the gad­get did not in­stant­ly pique his in­ter­est.

How­ev­er, as Sinanan con­tin­ued to speak, Ra­hael be­gan think­ing about the po­ten­tial of the young en­gi­neer, and won­dered to him­self: "If he can cre­ate such a prod­uct, what else is he ca­pa­ble of?"

Af­ter the pitch, the in­vestors on the pan­el grilled Sinanan, and as each ques­tion was served, Sinanan was able to re­turn a sol­id an­swer with ease and con­fi­dence, sig­nalling to the in­vestors that he knew ex­act­ly was he was talk­ing about.

Then it was crunch time, and Ra­hael, in­spired by the young en­gi­neer's pas­sion and dri­ve, made an of­fer.

Sinanan was in­ter­est­ed but want­ed to wait and see if any oth­er of­fers were on the ta­ble.

How­ev­er, be­ing the shrewd busi­ness­man that he is, Ra­hael in­di­cat­ed that he was mak­ing a one-time of­fer on­ly, warn­ing Sinanan that if he went else­where there would be no deal.

Sinanan took a minute to think, looked up, smiled, and said, "I ac­cept."

Right here in T&T, two peo­ple with two com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent back­grounds were able to cross paths and dis­cov­er over­lap­ping busi­ness in­ter­ests–all thanks to the plat­form pro­vid­ed by the Plant­i­ng Seeds TV pro­gramme.

Ra­hael's en­thu­si­asm for "pas­sion­ate peo­ple" and Sinanan's pas­sion for in­vent­ing came to­geth­er to cre­ate a new busi­ness part­ner­ship, with each per­son feed­ing on the oth­er's dri­ve and po­ten­tial.

Was it by chance? Or was it fate that brought these two to­geth­er? And what's next for this new­ly- found­ed busi­ness re­la­tion­ship?

Sinanan ex­plained that af­ter the show, he re­alised se­cur­ing fi­nanc­ing for his dream was not the most valu­able thing he re­ceived from his ex­pe­ri­ence on Plant­i­ng Seeds.

The UWI grad­u­ate said hav­ing Ra­hael as a men­tor and busi­ness part­ner taught him more than he could ever imag­ine about busi­ness and strat­e­gy.

"Learn­ing hap­pens every­day, every­where and from every­one," Sinanan said.

The two have moved full-speed ahead and are now fi­nal­is­ing the pro­to­type of Sinanan's in­ven­tion in or­der to mass-pro­duce and ex­port it to the US mar­ket.

They are al­so look­ing in­to mul­ti­ple ap­pli­ca­tions for the prod­uct, so that the ven­ture can di­ver­si­fy and evolve, as there are still a pletho­ra of op­por­tu­ni­ties yet to be ex­plored. Plant­i­ng Seeds was made pos­si­ble thanks to the col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort of Plant­i­ng Seeds pro­duc­ers Ernst & Young, and JD Sel­l­i­er, as well as spon­sors JMMB, Caribbean­jobs.com, Bea­con In­sur­ance, Blink l Bmo­bile, and Very Ex­cit­ing Things.

Be sure to tune in every Tues­day at 8 pm on CNC3, and watch as T&T's very own up-and-com­ing en­tre­pre­neurs vie to turn their busi­ness dreams in­to re­al­i­ty.


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