Why aren’t Pakistani Investors investing in Startups!

Friday 3rd October marks the day of graduation of 7 startups that were enrolled in LUMS Center for Entrepreneurship‘s The Foundation Program. The program culminated with an Investors Summit in which almost 40 investors from all over the country gathered to help these startups by investing.

Here I should mention that I have seen almost 50% of these investors play the role of mentors, judges and hosts at numerous technology or entrepreneurship events all over the country. In fact these investors are also involved as “investors” in other entrepreneurship incubators and accelerator programs of the country. These investors with different hats are flag bearers of entrepreneurship because they encourage the young-lings to take risks, to follow their passions and to pick the road to entrepreneurship.
But the irony is, these investors even after meeting hundreds of people have never invested in any startup whatsoever.

What’s stopping these investors from actually investing? We all know that entrepreneurship and consequently investment in budding startups is a risky and bumpy road but aren’t these investors experienced? Haven’t these investors gone through the same phases in their lives?
I am not sure whether the investors are afraid or just simply not interested in investment because majority of these have yet to make their first one and the first one is always difficult.

6 startups (Playbolt Studios, Interacta, Savaree, BizClout, MARO Tandoors, Burq Solutions) pitched their products in front of 40 investors on the graduation day. MARO Tandoors out-shined all other startups because of their ambitious and exciting pitch.
The hall bursted into laughter when Ali, CEO of MARO Tandoors said,

“You are all very lucky to witness the most dynamic and the most amazing startup to ever come out of Pakistani Startup Scene.”

But this was just the start, the team was well prepared and everybody seemed glued to their pitch all the duration of it.

These 6 startups were aiming to raise from 200K to 250K USD as investments. After the pitching session, a few investors left right away but there were few who stayed and showed interest. At the dinner networking session, while a few startups looked miserable sitting alone waiting for someone to show up on their table, there were many who enjoyed attention of numerous investors. At the end of the day, you only need one investor to say “Yes”, so it’s best to ignore the other ones, who said “No”.

Even though the event was very organized, everything was executed in a very proper fashion, so many investors showed up but the real success of this event will be defined by how many startups get investment because of this investors’ summit and that we are yet to see!

Image Credits: Badar Khushnood