Tech support: P@SHA assists startups to find investors

16 startups graduate after a successful incubation of four months

KARACHI: Having always worked towards promotion, protection and development of Pakistan’s software and services industry, P@SHA’s brainchild Nest i/o on Monday introduced its latest cohort of startups to investors and industry experts at a graduation ceremony.

Nest i/o is a technology incubator, a community hub launched by the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA), with global partners Google for Entrepreneurs and Samsung, and a supporting grant from the US State Department.



It provides budding entrepreneurs with space, infrastructure, facilities and knowledge sessions as well as access to a network of mentors and potential investors. The ceremony marked the graduation of 16 more startup businesses from Nest i/o after a successful incubation of four months.

With its fourth batch graduating, Nest i/o has facilitated a total of 79 startups in 23 months. Of these, 19 teams have raised funding to scale up their services whereas 16% of the co-founders have been women.

In the latest batch, four teams worked in the technology education space, the purpose of which was to support innovation in Pakistan’s education sector.

The diverse startups also worked on business innovation in the healthcare, retail, fintech and advertising space.

Speaking on the occasion, P@SHA President Jehan Ara highlighted the achievements of the graduating batch and shared the vision of the incubator. “Nest i/o hopes to assist young entrepreneurs and create more tech businesses in Pakistan,” she said.

“We are amazed by the quality of innovative businesses and passion of young entrepreneurs. This time too, we had a diverse set of teams, focusing on areas like education, financial inclusion and healthcare that really need to be targeted to address a number of social and economic issues in the country.”

She added these young startups were not only creating jobs but were also playing an active role in resolving several of the challenges the country faced.

Planet N Group of Companies Founder Nadeem Hussain said via Skype that Pakistan was at an early stage for investors but “we are swiftly moving up the economic curve”. As a result, there was immense hope among the startups that they would be able to take advantage of the opportunities available.



According to the Nest i/o spokesperson, a lot of local and international opportunities open up for the graduating startups and so far almost 20% of the startups have been able to receive funding.

At the event, the graduating startups had a chance to introduce their ideas to the investors in order to attract funding.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2016.

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