Aitizaz Hassan

The Pakistani startups were provided with an opportunity at a recently held summit to interact and get connected with investors from different countries across the world, WealthPK reports.

Investors from the USA, China, Scotland, Germany, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Turkey, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, India, Malaysia and Singapore participated in the national investment summit. The summit was held at National Incubation Centre (NIC) in Islamabad to connect startups with leading investors across the globe.

More than 430 startups submitted applications on the occasion and 80 of them were shortlisted for the summit. The event was attended by more than 250 investors from all over the world including 60% of venture capitalists and 40% of angel investors. Angel investors are affluent individuals, who invest their own money into startup ventures, whereas venture capital investors are employed by a risk capital company where they invest money owned by other people.

About 18% of applications were submitted by fintech startups and e-commerce each while 9% were forwarded by the people associated with e-education. The ratio of applications from the agri-tech sector was 28% and 18% of startups showed interest in artificial intelligence while 9% wanted to attract investment in the logistics sector. About 88% of startups booked investors’ hours. They shared their business ideas with the investors and asked for a $64.7 million investment.

The summit also provided an opportunity to entrepreneurs to have one-on-one meetings with investors and benefit from their experience and ideas.

National Incubation Centre provides holistic solutions to the issues of startups by connecting them with investors. Its initiatives have helped startups to raise more than $21 million since 2016.

NIC is the first centre of its kind in Pakistan that hosts a “Fintech Hackathon” in collaboration with Allied Bank Limited (ABL), one of the largest banks in the country. NIC offers the youth to join the ‘Hackathon’ and avail a chance to get Rs2 million cash prize money if they are coders, experts in user interface design or user experience design and problem-solvers, having a passion for fintech.

According to official documents of NIC, a key factor behind the growth of the fintech market in Pakistan is the large investment by banks and businesses in technology-based solutions. Infrastructure-based technologies and application programme interfaces (APIs) are reshaping the future of the financial services industry and supporting the growth of the global fintech market.

The purpose of holding the ‘Fintech Hackathon’ is to find practical innovative ideas, prototypes and solutions to challenges in the fintech space. Through the Hackathon, NIC and ABL want to find disruptive ideas that can transform fintech, not just in Pakistan, but across the globe, according to the documents, available with WealthPK.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk