Poutama has teamed up with the Tribal Economies group at Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu to assist with the group’s kaupapa of enabling the development and growth of Ngai Tahu whanau and hapu businesses. We are pretty excited to be working with the Tribal Economies group as it offers the opportunity to do some testing on how we can collaborate with Ngai Tahu to push our combined experience and resources out to whanau and hapu.
Tribal Economies have set up a business portal called Puna Pakihi. Via this portal Puna Pakihi aims to comtemporise Aotearoa mythology in an engaging format to help whanau get their inspired business ideas off the ground.
Puna Pakihi will;
- Connect whanau to the appropriate services through:
a. Business Mentors
b. Accelerator Programmes
c. Funding services
d. Workshops/networking events
e. Regional economic development - Provide whānau with a comprehensive business repository that will include;
a. Resources – e.g. business model templates
b. Articles
c. Testimonials - Virtual Assistance via;
a. Online assistance to help whānau complete the business model canvas
b. Online document editing and P2P secured chat
Poutama and Tribal Economies have agreed to contribute investment towards assisting businesses. At this stage the process for applying for the investment will be through the normal Poutama application portal but over time there will also be a link on the Puna Pakihi portal. Poutama and Tribal Economies will contribute equal amounts whilst the business will be expected to contribute 25% of the total investment required. The maximum investment amount will be $20,000 in any 12 month period. The amount invested will also be able to be leveraged to access other sources of investment e.g. crowdfunding. It is expected that this service will be trialled over 12 months and then reviewed and if necessary, refined.
But wait there’s more…..we may have our first client to go through the process…..Manu Media owned by Sampson Karst is working with Tribal Economies and has just completed the Business Model Canvas. The next step will be getting Poutama involved.
Manu Media is a Christchurch based video production and commercial photography company. They strategically and creatively communicate with your clients and customers. They do this with videos that tell stories, photography that demands attention and marketing that gets results.
Poutama sees the link up with Ngai Tahu as a step towards collaborating with other iwi entities to push business enabling services out to their respective whanau and hapu. It will be a transformative process particularly as iwi stabilise the management of their resources and undertake closer engagement with their stakeholders.
In addition to Poutama working with Tribal Economies other organisations will also be providing services so that whanau and hapu will have a one-stop-shop through Puna Pakihi. These organisations include; Business Mentors NZ, Te Puni Kokiri, Callaghan Innovation and Icehouse.
