Top 30 Pakistani startups to pitch at the IT Ministry’s PAKImpactInvest competition

Top 30 selected startups from all over Pakistan will be pitching at the IT Ministry’s PAKImpactInvest competition and competing for grand prizes; it was announced Monday. Judges present on the panel overseeing the competing startups comprise prominent business figures, including Ayub Ghauri, Executive director of Netsol and Omer Abedin, chief marketing officer at Graana.

PAKImpactInvest, hailed as Pakistan’s first national investment platform, was launched by the Ministry of Information Tech­no­logy and Telecommunica­tions (MoITT) to open up new investment avenues and bridge the gap between entrepreneurs and investment opportunities by connecting them with national and international investors. The initiative involves technical cooperation from the private sector to co-design and launch the competition.

With “ease of business” measures introduced by SECP, a prevailing exemption of taxes for the IT and IT-enabled services, increasing opportunities for the local entrepreneurs in the form of public and private incubators/accelerators and a substantial increase in foreign venture capitalists investing in Pakistani startups, Pakistan has seen a surge in the number of startups initiating with innovative ideas.

The growth of startup culture in Pakistan with initiatives such as PAKImpactInvest have also skyrocketed Pakistan’s IT exports which reached a new high of $1.1 billion in the previous fiscal year.

Read More: National Incubation Center achieves the milestone of onboarding more than 200 startups since launch.