To give the startup culture a real boost, MIT Enterprise Forum Pakistan and ITU held a two-day event at Arfa Software Technology Park, Lahore on 26-27th January, 2017.
Day 1
The opening ceremony, was initiated by Dr. Umar Saif, Chairman of MITEFP, PITB and Vice Chancellor of ITU. Dr. Saif, who addressed the audience full of aspiring entrepreneurs, mentioned Startup Lahore as a “startup revolution which is a celebration of the ecosystem.”
Nine simultaneous sessions took place on day one, including ‘Emerging Entrepreneurial Opportunities in the Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence Space’ was curated by Raza Matin, Marketing & Business Consultant at Google Pakistan. This was to give young entrepreneurs an insight in the science of artificial intelligence. Alongside this session, Ali Murtaza, Program Manager and Design Consultant at Make-i-stan organised a three-hour long workshop on ‘Rapid Prototyping for User Interfaces’.
Startup Lahore also had something in store for high school students, they participated in a communication workshop with with Sana Khalid, Program Manager of Lincoln Corner. Sana’s session included a fun Marshmellow and Lego challenges for the students. Saad Mahmood a Windows Development MVP from Microsoft curated two sessions for attendees at Startup Lahore. The first being, ‘A Review of Xamarin for Mobile Developers’ which was followed by ‘Microsoft Bot Framework’. Khizr Tajammul from The Social Innovation Lab, which is a social enterprise incubator at LUMS put together a seminar on ‘Design Thinking for Entrepreneurs with an Impact’. This session focused on understanding social entrepreneurship through design thinking. The participants had role playing activities in which they were asked to imagine being visually impaired and to then navigate the venue, in order to provide solutions on how the venue can be designed better. The group came together with solutions on how to improve the facility.
In another room in ITU, IDG conducted a comparative analytical session on ‘Startups vs Scaleup’ with an esteemed panel including everyone from startup co-founders of MangoBaaz and XGear to, angel investor Mr. Humayun Mazhar and industry professionals such as Ayub Ghauri. This panel was moderated by Ms. Aqsa Tariq. To end the day Mr. Badar Khushnood, Partner at Bramerz curated an interactive session on ‘Growth hacking and Digital Marketing Trends’, to a packed auditorium. Badar pointed out the top 20 tips in growth hacking for startups.
The organisers at Startup Lahore arranged a surprise acquisition news on day one of a PlanX startup Smart Devices that got acquired by BlueEast, an IoT division of Orient Electronics.
Throughout the day there were exhibits happening for startups in the building. The entrepreneurs and their teams got a chance to showcase their product demos and services. On the ground floor of Arfa Software Technology Park. This included industry leaders such as Careem, Orient, British Council, Fatima Ventures and Bookme.pk who set up corporate pavilions where participants got a chance to network with the corporate sector to see how their making a difference in the startup ecosystem. There was also food being served by Maro Tandoors, Simply Sufi, Latteria Mozzarella and even a Gol Gappa stall.
The closing ceremony ended on a high note with the announcement of the Startup Rumble finalists, who got a chance to compete for cash prizes the following day, by pitching their business idea to a panel of judges. The Top 20 included startups such as StocksFM, Chef Chalet and Car Butlers.
Day 2
The MIT Enterprise Forum – Pakistan and Information Technology University hosted Startup Lahore, a two day interactive event that brought together the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem of Pakistan to promote cross-sector collaboration.
Startup Lahore: Day two was an invite only, closed event, which kicked off on January 27th with an investors training session for EO Lahore members. The investors felt they needed to be educated on the kind of investments to make and the expectations they should have from startups.
Simultaneously, a panel discussion was being held on Pakistan: An Emerging Market, where big names from the startup, industry and angel investment world shared their opinions and expertise on varying trends in the technology sector. Mr. Mudassir Sheikha, co-founder of Careem, Mr. Khurram Jamali, Industry Head Google APAC and Asha Jadeja Motwani, Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist shared their valuable experiences shedding light on entrepreneurship and growing market trends in Pakistan and beyond our borders. The panel discussion was moderated by Ms. Hafsa Shorish, Director at PlanX | MITEFP. The US Counsel General Yuriy Fedkiw also joined in as an attendee at the panel discussion.
One of the key points discussed was how different emerging markets are to mature markets. Asha felt that “The opportunity here is that the emerging markets are significantly different. This is true across the border between the Indian, Japanese and Brazilian markets. This shapes its own temptations. There are lots of clone companies, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel but rather tailor something to your market.”
Mudassar gave Careem’s example and mentioned that “The emerging market opportunity for startups is much bigger, because there’s nothing there. There are 800 cars per 1000 people in the US. Europe is more developed in terms of public transportation. What do we have in Pakistan? The car ownership in Pakistan is the lowest at 18 cars per 1000 people. We’re not disrupting, we’re building in Pakistan.”
Khurram Jamali further elaborated on this discussion, stating that “In Emerging Markets because of access issues and productivity issues, building an online pure play can be far more challenging. It’s important to think about the offline angle as well. You have to build a good product but it’s just as critical to put together solid sales and business development teams. [You should] really go after the business, don’t wait for the business to come to you. This problem is everywhere, but more so in emerging markets.”
Dr. Umar Saif, Chairman of MITEFP, PITB and Vice Chancellor of ITU also joined in the panel discussion. He praised the panel for coming and inspiring young people and helping us build an ecosystem in Pakistan. He stressed that, “the reason why we don’t have external VC’s in Pakistan is because bringing in money is hard enough, but taking it out is even harder. It is not a challenge unique to Pakistan, but it’s a real challenge in Pakistan.”
The panel discussion was proceeded by the much anticipated Startup Rumble competition which involved entrepreneurs pitching their business idea to compete for cash prizes. Over 220 applications were received. After an online round of voting and application screening, 85 applications were shortlisted through a vigorous screening process by an initial pool of judges, who then selected the top 20 finalists. These top 20 startups pitched their idea in front of a panel of judges at the Startup Rumble Competition. Startups and attendees gathered from Islamabad, KPK, Multan, Hyderabad and Wah, to name a few.
In the midst of all the pitches, an investment news was released to the crowd. Car Chabi, a startup currently accelerated at PlanX raised a seed round of $150,000 from Treet Corporation Ltd. The co-founders Ali Rashid (CEO) and Hammad Siddiqui (COO) shared this news with aspiring entrepreneurs along with their investor, Syed Shehryar Ali, Executive Director at Treet Group of Companies.
The winners of the first prize at Startup Rumble were a startup named, CricFlex who received a cash prize of 1,000,000 PKR sponsored by CMACED, a part of The Superior Group. The runners up, Neurostic won a Cash Prize of 500,000 PKR sponsored by Cutting Edge and Car Chabi (Powered by RoboArt). The 2nd runner up was CampusFeed who received the 3rd Cash Prize of 200,000 PKR sponsored by BlueEast a division of Orient Electronics. The Startup Lahore team had additional prizes in stall for the most innovative idea, which was awarded to Galla and the best idea stage startup which was presented to Pak Peaks based on their business idea. They received a cash prize of 40,000 PKR each which was sponsored by BlueEast.
