Jumpstart Pakistan, the road to Entrepreneurship

JumpStart Pakistan held their first event yesterday at Margalla Hotel, Islamabad. The idea was to promote entrepreneurship by helping people construct sustainable business models using the guidance of experienced businessmen. The event partners included Microsoft, P@SHA and The AppJuice among others.

Many startups pitched their ideas to esteemed panelists and some of these ideas were quite impressive. Among them was Mubashir Hassan, a 9th grade young farmer from Gujranwala who took to entrepreneurship in the livestock sector. Mubashir believed that better ways could help change farming into a thriving business and that there was a need to bring the best methods to farmer. Mubashir’s ideas and passion inspired many in the audience who even gave the young entrepreneur a standing ovation.

Five Teams were selected for pitching to investors in the next Shephard’s Pie session. The ideas include developing a low cost mobile robot which could be used in the industry, Meri Taleem, a portal for students and Creanyx, an SMS marketing solution. Creanyx, which is a team of four graduates from FAST, Islamabad, intrigued the investors and was able to get an offer of 5M! It is noteworthy that the capital needed for the startup is around 15M and with 1/3 of the required capital, they could get a head start.

The session also featured key speakers from the Industry whose wise words served to uplift the spirits of the attendees and inculcate business ethics. The speakers included Dr Arshad Ali, Principal SEECS, Tahir Masood of Microsoft and Shehryar Hydri, Co-Founder of Scrybe.

JumpStart Pakistan is a great initiative. It aims to incubate over 1500 startups and connect people with great business ideas to shepherds who can help them out. We hope this event marks the beginning of many other JumpStart Pakistan sessions so that more people can find their road to entrepreneurship.