Samar Hasan has resigned from her position as Head of Communications at Karandaaz to launch a social enterprise named Epiphany for Pakistan.
Epiphany is a social enterprise platform to help other impact based ventures launch, scale and sustain. Samar, as the cofounder of this enterprise, will lead different initiatives to support the wave of social enterprises (socents) in Pakistan. The enterprise will offer a wide-array of programs and services for assisting impact based ventures, government and donor organizations. As an inaugural project, Epiphany is going to run a Business Validation Lab in partnership with the Unreasonable Institute in the U.S. This program will be more of a customized business acceleration program for social ventures to quickly iterate and refine their business models.
While speaking to TechJuice, Samar mentioned that in Pakistan major number of entrepreneurship programs are focused on the technology sector. Hence, the support for socents is limited and not easily accessible. Yet, these organizations are purely focused on social good.
She said,
“Pakistan has a burgeoning youth population. There is a need to harness the talent and streamline the ambitions of these young people. The number of youth versus the support available is hugely disproportionate. Now is the right time to take action.”
Samar has over 12 years of work experience in the industry. In the past, she has been a core member of several impact based entrepreneurial ventures ranging from educational institutions to technology and entrepreneurship related projects. She played a key role in creating state of the art Habib University in Karachi. She was also one of the initial team members who conceptualized Karachi Institute of Technology and Entrepreneurship. Most recently, in her role as Head of Communications at Karandaaz Pakistan, she helped in community mobilization, capacity building, FinTech and financial inclusion programs.
For Epiphany, Samar is joined by Shah Saud Sahibzada as the cofounder. Shah Saud has over 10 years of experience in designing, leading and managing local and international programs. Currently, he is working as Director Program at USAID Citizen’s Voice Project.
