The “Build-A-Business” Workshop series, organized by Pakistan Startup Cup, reached Karachi after choosing top 25 teams each from Islamabad and Lahore. The competition at Karachi commenced from 23rd-24th April and saw a distinctive lineup of business ideas from more than 80 teams of the city. Each startup was evaluated by at least 10 judges. Through detailed and rigorous evaluation these judges filtered out best 25 of Karachi’s innovations.
“Build-A-Business” workshops are conducted on an annual basis in the metropolitan cities of the country. Alongwith creating an environment of competitiveness in the startup world, the workshop also provides add on benefits to the startups e.g. exposure, mentorship, networking opportunities and of course validation.
Startup Cup 2016
Murtaza Zaidi (TiE Islamabad Chapter)
Murtaza Zaidi, the Executive Director The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Islamabad while talking to Startup.pk shared his views about Startup Cup 2016,
Pakistan StartUp Cup 2016 has been a phenomenal success so far. It is by far the biggest StartUp Cup in the world with 900 startups applying, 450 going through Build-A-Business workshops with an engagement of 200 mentors across Pakistan. We have witnessed some great Startups with a potential of high growth within a short span of time, several partnerships, investment offers and collaborations have already been taken place in the past two week – It’s getting more exciting every passing day!
The Inspiring Mentors
More than 40 mentors from different industries were invited to the event. The mentors orientation session was filled with energy and vibrant participation of the mentors to help the participating teams move towards advancement and growth.
The comments by one of the winning teams ForiFix:
It was a indeed a very essential workshop to attend and meet such inspiring mentors cum coaches. The hall was full of energy, positive vibes, aspirations and of course winning spirit. Pakistan StartUp Cup simply enabled us to rethink, Act and Evolve to the next level with the insights much needed from none but the experts.
The Winning Ideas
Like Islamabad and Lahore the winning Ideas from Startup Cup Karachi were of diverse categories. Each startup was working in a particular niche. However, the most popular categories were Health, Business Solutions and Fashion/Entertainment. Here’s a category wise list of the winning ideas;
Health/Wellness
Education
- WonderTree
- Edvolution
Business Services
- InvestorsLounge
- Wukla
- OODA Business Solutions
- Hassan SMART Intercom
Social Services
Fashion/Entertainment
- Mocha & Co.
- Maya’s Closet
- Paimona
- Rover Adventure Club
- The Tailor Swift
- Zed Mars
General Consumer
- ForiFix
- CompareOn Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd
- Guddoo.pk
Besides these, other startups in the top 25 included NanoClo, ZyaDoc Mashal, Green Packages (Pvt) Ltd, WrapKar and YourCouch.
The Guest of honor distributed the certificates among the winners.
Image Credits: TiE Islamabad Chapter
An interesting element that stood out in Startup Cup Karachi was more than 50% of the winning teams were led by women such as Maya’s Closet led by Sabeen, ForiFix led by Samina Faisal, DoctHers led by Sara Khurrum . This fact is encouraging in support of the women entrepreneurship based activism and initiatives specifically in Karachi and generally in all over the country.
Top 25 Karachi pose for a group photo. Image credits: TIE Islamabad Chapter
Next Event
The next “Build-A-Business” workshop was to be held in Faisalabad on 30th April but due to certain administrative reasons TiE Islamabad announced that the workshop is postponed to a later date.
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