And how he will be helping the next generation of Jamaican entrepreneurs get started

Dushyant Savadia, founder and CEO of the Amber Group, has collaborated with the University of Technology (UTech) to launch the Amber/UTech Launchpad, an innovative initiative to help 100 Jamaican startups get their businesses going in 1000 days.

This has never occurred in Jamaica before and it is a bold step to help particularly young entrepreneurs get a foot up the ladder in what can be a treacherous landscape fraught with difficulties and obstacles.

Here is Dushyant Savadia’s full address at the event held at UTech in Kingston to announce the Amber/UTech Launchpad:

“Thank you for being here this evening.

This evening is very special to me personally, and thank you for honoring my mother too. She passed away last weekend. It was very tough to journey back to Jamaica, but I just thought that my pain cannot be bigger than the gain Jamaica will get from this launch.

And I’m here, and thank you for being here to celebrate this event with me. I want to start by giving you a little background history.

In September/October, I met the Prime Minister and I gave him this idea for Amber Launchpad, and I said, “Prime minister, here’s the presentation, here’s how I want to do it, here’s the plan behind what I want to do,” and he, as usual, has been very supportive.

You might have known the Amber HEART Academy was also through his absolute intervention. It moved quite fast, and we launched the Amber Heart Academy a couple of years ago, which now has graduated nearly 200 students and is now currently having 500 students studying coding in Amber Coding Academy, at the Stony Hill Campus of HEART. And similarly, back in October, I reached out to the prime minister because I like to run the ideas by him first because he’s got that vision; he knows what he can do with it. And as soon as I pitched the whole idea, “This is what I would like to do as Amber,” he said, “Dushyant, this is UTech. You need to do this with UTech. UTech has all the infrastructure, has the capability to give training, and has all the infrastructure required to support you to make this a big success.” And then, through his office’s introduction, we met Dr. Kevin Brown.

I’ve always known government is very slow to respond to things, but I tell you, in both of my cases, it was done with enlightening speed. In four months’ time, we are here launching the Amber UTech Launchpad, and my personal reason to start Amber/UTech Launchpad was very simple.

I was a startup eight years ago. I still believe I’m a startup. I don’t want to change those boots ever because it’s keeping me on the go all the time. Amber Group started back in 2015. After eight years in operation, we are in 100 countries all over the world. We have formed a network of users and distributors all over the world in that time period. We are now a Group of 12 companies and the way we’ve operated is that we’ve always focused on where there is a requirement, where there is a gap, and what we need to do. Not only that, we focused simply on having a great product and having brilliant marketing abilities all over the world. We also made sure that we apply and are qualified with the right standards of processes and procedures. So, we are an ISO 9001, we are an ISO 27001, we are a PCI-compliant company.

We did everything that was required to make sure that the world can embrace Jamaica fully without doubt or a question, that we know how to build software and we know how to get things done.

My first business was Amber Connect, vehicle tracking, and fleet management.

This is where we started eight years ago, and I still remember funny stories. It was a 200-square-foot office that we started Amber Group with eight years ago. Now in that 200 sq ft office, I had three staff members with all three of us sitting on the floor and folding boxes. I still remember getting our first customers… we got the first 100 customers who trusted us to put our trackers in their cars, and they would call in the middle of the night if the vehicle was stolen or there was some issue with the app.

My colleague Maria at that time (she used to share an apartment with me then) would receive the call in the middle of the night, “Good evening, Amber Connect, how can I help you?” And they would say, “We would like to speak to your technical support. Please stay online; we’ll connect you.” And she would come banging on my door in the next room, and I would take that call and say, “Good evening, this is Amber Connect. How can I help you?”

This is how we started the journey of Amber Connect. I cleaned the floors. We might show you later… we actually painted the first 200 sq ft office on Haning Road by myself because I didn’t have the money to hire somebody to paint the wall. I’ve gone through everything one can think of; we know how to build beautiful software. Then we went into Amber Innovations, which was my next business. Amber Innovations was a software development house, and now, seven years’ since the inception of this business, we have over 1,000 software developers in-house on our payroll, all over the world, between Jamaica, South Africa, India, Dubai. We build phenomenal software for so many large banks, so many large companies all over the world.

Have you used the JPS app in Jamaica? That was built by us. I’m very proud of it. Look at the new Palace Amusement app; that was also built by us. And apart from that, we do a lot of work with banks and stuff like that. So, that was our second business. We then moved on to the third one, which was Amber Fuels.

Imagine this technology where you drive in, fill gas, and leave, and your card is automatically charged; your app has your invoice, everything. That’s the tech we built, and we now work with a lot of large petroleum companies around the world, supplying them this technology. And after that, we built Amber Pay. See, there is an ecosystem that we started building, one after another. So, when we built Amber Fuels, we knew we needed a payment solution on top of it. Over time, we built one of the most sophisticated payment platforms in Jamaica, now launched in South Africa and so many other countries.

We built one of the most comprehensive digital wallet apps that we are now supplying to banks. So, we don’t roll out ourselves; we are the backend of a lot of banks across the world. Once we built the payment platform, we realised, okay, we also need rewards. So then we built Amber Rewards. It’s a whole cut-copy-paste software that you can launch a rewards program for your own business in 24 hours. It’s just building pieces of technology on top of each other, which became businesses by themselves.

Don’t ask why this? Even I can’t answer that. The only reason is that I’m a pilot. I’m a licensed pilot for Jamaica. I’ve got a pilot’s license from South Africa, and being a pilot was my childhood dream. You might not know but when I was four years old, I got TB, and something happened, and there was a medical reaction… I lost my speech. I couldn’t speak a word until the age of 16. Between 16 to 20, I was stammering so much that it would take me one minute to say one sentence. Aged 18, I enrolled at the flying school.

Since I was four years old, since then, I wanted to fly planes. But at the age of 18, when I enrolled in the flying school, I couldn’t pass the radio exam, and thankfully, I didn’t pass. At least I could come to Jamaica and be here with you. Also, I realized that I had a serious issue with my speech, I couldn’t speak, and that is why I couldn’t qualify to be a pilot.

That little seed remained in my heart, and three years ago, I went and got my license, and I speak to international traffic now all over the world when I fly. But also, I saw a gap in tourism aviation in Jamaica. There is a big tourism market in Jamaica, and we are not giving a 3D experience to our visitors yet. After a lot of interventions from many people, after two years of struggle and hard work, we now have acquired five aircraft. They’re all coming to Jamaica; a few of them are already here. Just yesterday, we received our final confirmation from the Negril airport to get our hangar built, and the business should be off the ground this year, (in the next four to five months at the most) and we’re moving ahead very fast.

Amber will be using microlight aircraft. They are very safe. It flies over the beaches, 1,000 ft up, and you get the most amazing experience of Jamaica from the air. We are also into a jet-share programme that is also coming right behind it. And after aviation, we went into Cybereye.

We realised we are a big software house; we needed our own cybersecurity company. We bought out a cybersecurity company in the US that made us very strong. Our offerings and services to our customers also changed with this. So, we do a lot of third-party cybersecurity.

Then we went into Amber IoT. It’s another company we bought in South Africa. See, sometimes I can’t build all the businesses myself; it’s better to buy them out and change them into Amber, and these are all owned by the Jamaican-headquartered Amber Group.

All these businesses are owned by the Jamaican entity, which is the Amber Group. With Amber IoT, we realised we needed to build hardware. We can’t just keep building software; we also need different hardware solutions for different user cases. We acquired our license, prime minister, for rolling out our own Sigfox Network in Jamaica from the Ministry of Science and Technology. So, we are rolling out our own IoT data network, which is not simply for phone calls, but to communicate data from vehicle trackers, asset management and such.

Can you imagine this network will give up to 100 kilometres of range into the sea so that a fisherman can press a panic button, and allow us to send the Coast Guard for rescue?

It’s a whole different level, and it could be the biggest backup for natural disasters because it doesn’t need a lot of electricity and all of that; it’s a low-power network.

After that, we started Amber FundMe. It’s a crowdfunding platform that we give to banks.

Following AmberFundMe, last year, we took significant shares in Nationwide News Network to digitalise the media. Also, in March or April at the latest, we are launching 50 radio stations in a single app, and we have received all our licensing already. So that’s all on its way.

I’m sure most of you are familiar with the Amber HEART Academy, our humanitarian outreach effort. It’s done phenomenal work over the last few years to educate so many youngsters on coding. And then we started coding in schools, and then, of course, you would remember, during the pandemic, we built a massive piece of software for Jamaica. Many people do not know, that after we launched it in Jamaica and used it in Jamaica it helped to bring back nearly 30,000 stranded citizens who couldn’t come back home. This technology allowed them to return. We knew where they were, and we could manage the pandemic very well. But after Jamaica, six to seven other countries actually used our platform during the height of the pandemic, which is a big success for Jamaica. Our tech was used across the whole of the Caribbean. This is what the Amber Group has been able to accomplish and why I share with all of you our story and journey.

The journey that we’ve been through, from startup in a 200-square-foot office with very little money with nobody trusting us, to becoming one of the largest technology conglomerates of Jamaica now and serving 100 countries out of Jamaica is remarkable.

So, I’ve gone through the startup journey. I know how difficult it is. I still remember the first time I went to an investor, prime minister, in Jamaica in 2016.

They said, “Fantastic product, well done, but I need you to step down as a CEO, and we will run the business because we know the Jamaican market.”

I just turned around and left. If you take the heart out of the body, then there is no machinery left to use. And that is what allowed us to look at the financial struggles I went through trying to find money. Every time you run out of money and you need a little more to pay the next bill in order that another customer can pay you some money just to keep going, just to stay alive, just to survive. I also went through every imaginable pressure that you can think of to run a business at that time. I had to build the business myself.

But over time, what I realised is at the end of the day, thinking big, going global, building products that solve customer pain points, providing visually appealing and affordable solutions -that is what the Amber Group is all about. That is why we have made great strides because we don’t stop innovating.

The Amber Group has no external investors; the entire group is owned 100 per cent by me now. We took out one minority shareholder in one of the businesses, and that was it because the struggle always remained because not everybody understands your passion.

That is what brought us to thinking about the Launchpad because I don’t want others to suffer what I went through. It is extremely difficult to own and run a business in Jamaica. It is an onerous and soul-destroying process and it takes fortitude and guts to enter that arena.

You go to a bank; they might almost ask for your blood sample too before you get a penny. It’s hard, it is real, it’s a pain, right? But then we also know that what makes success is innovation. Why Amber grew so fast is because we built some very good applications, and we used the right marketing techniques all around the world. I don’t know if you’re aware, but the Global Innovation Index currently ranks Jamaica 78 out of 132. We’re that far behind when it comes to innovations as a country. And that is why our motivation behind this was to underscore our commitment to nurturing entrepreneurship and driving economic development.

This public-private partnership with UTech, Government, and Amber working together is what we really wanted in order to move to the next level. So, what does it mean? You’ve heard Amber/UTech Launchpad too many times, but what does it involve? What it involves is, one, it’s a comprehensive support system, end-to-end development with founder protection for any founder who wants to work with us under the Amber/UTech umbrella.

So, what do we provide to the founders? One, we provide a whole end-to-end development of their product. You will never have to go beg for money to finish your product and roll it out into the market, ever. So, that was the first big milestone we wanted to conquer because I have gone through that myself. I ran out of funding halfway. There was a friend of mine who loaned me some money, which is the usual startup case. I ran out of that funding, and then I said, “Who do I scratch my head and go beg for more?”

No one is going to give you the money because they don’t trust you. There was one friend of mine who gave me $112,000 in 2016 and took it back the next day because he realized, “What if I don’t get it back?” What is $112,000 to a very rich man? But this is the reality of our life. So, we decided we will not launch an incubator where you need to go beg for money every time you need to move to the next level. How about, with the army of software developers we have, we build everything you need to build as part of our contribution?

Second, we provide full founder protection. That means there will be a capped equity, so that also means you’ll always remain the majority shareholder of this business, no matter what I need to spend to get your business into 100 countries. It’s a complete concept-to-company support, and we provide global sales and marketing support because we’ve already built the rails to go into the whole world from here. All we are doing is putting more bags on that carousel.

UTech’s contribution to the Launchpad is vital in that it provides the office infrastructure to all the startups. These startups backed up by Amber and UTech will be receiving full support in terms of office space, electricity, internet, and proper training at the same time.

So, it’ll be a one-year project. In one year, our intention is that we take you from training to while we engage in parallelly building your product before launching you out into the whole world through our marketing channel. Amber is already serving more than, you know, millions of customers all over the world directly, and hundreds and thousands in Jamaica too. So, we already have the whole ecosystem to launch your business into the world.

What are the next steps from here for Amber Launchpad? The applications will be open from today until April 6th. So, for one month, you can go to the My Amber Group website, click on the link, go upload your concept, you upload what you want to build, and there are a series of questions you will answer. You will then go into a shortlisting process. Once the shortlisting process is over, the results will be announced on 25th of April, where we will start with season one.

I’m going to do it like Shark Tank, and we are also televising the whole event, every single thing. So, we’re going to do 10 seasons in three years to launch 100 startups. Between May and June, the TV pitching will happen, but before they come on the TV show to pitch their product, we will train them, we’ll polish them, we will make sure they know how to deliver the message. You might know how to build a beautiful design on paper as an architect, but if you can’t go sell it and you can’t convince the other person that this is the best thing since sliced bread, it’s useless.

So, we also need to polish them, hone them a little bit to how to make pitches, how to understand business, and be ready for questions that the judges will ask from the business community. And finally, we will take the first 10 startups from season one and bring them into UTech and roll them out in the next year or so. But there’ll be one season after another. We intend to do 10 seasons back-to-back in three years. That is why we say ‘100 startups in 10,000 days’ would be amazing — 100 new businesses in Jamaica.

I want to thank you, UTech, for allowing and supporting us. I also want to invite the business community, especially since Chris Zacca is here. Please support us in the advertisements that we need to sponsor the TV shows. It’s very expensive, but we want the whole of Jamaica to become a part of the selection process. Therefore, there will be voting systems and all of those things so people can vote for which entrepreneur they like and which concept they like, and we will take it from there. We invite all aspiring entrepreneurs, investors, and industry professionals to get involved with the Amber UTech Launchpad as participants, mentors, or supporters. I want to conclude by saying that we have a vision for the future of Jamaica’s technology ecosystem, envisioning a thriving community of innovators, creators, and changemakers driving positive change and prosperity for all to join the Amber/UTech Launchpad.

Thank you all. Wow! Who’s excited? Yes, that is amazingly exciting. And I’m going to be glued to watching all 10 seasons because I’m going to be voting. If you need a guest judge, I’ll be a volunteer for whatever you need me for because this is an incredible opportunity. I love to see the progress that we’re making and the support for entrepreneurs and, most importantly, the financial component because I’ve spoken to probably hundreds of entrepreneurs by now, and the number one problem they always tell me, the number one hurdle, is getting the funding.

‘Where do I get the money to launch this brilliant idea that I have? Where do I get the money to do the amazing things that I want to do for the country?’

Amber UTech Launchpad solves that problem.”

Special guest speakers included Prime Minister Andrew Holness; president and CEO of Sagicor Group Jamaica, Christopher Zacca; former president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) revered businessman Howard Mitchell; and new UTech president, Dr Kevin Brown.

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