Pakistan’s young entrepreneurs share creative ideas at Startup Weekend

Startup Weekend brings together tech entrepreneurs in Karachi

Local Pakistani entrepreneurs gathered to present their innovative ideas at Google-powered ‘Startup Weekend’, hosted by Karachi-based technology incubator, Nest I/O.

Google-powered ‘Startup Weekend’ event is a global campaign, which is organized in over 150 cities all over the world.

Over 60 ideas were pitched in total of which 27 companies were shortlisted during the 54-hour event which stretched from 24th to 26th March. Three teams managed to bag the top positions while 2 teams were given special shout-outs.

The 54-hour event brought together local entrepreneurs and industry leaders to collaborate on ideas, form teams, and pitch in front of a panel of judges.

During this period all teams were coached and mentored by a number of experts, carefully chosen by local organizers to make sure that all teams made the best product pitches possible.

The coaches included industry prominent leaders like Humayun Bashir, Hasnain Gangjee Babar Khan Javed, Faizan Laghari and alumni of The Nest I/O which included Founders Sukoon.com.pk Shoaib Iqbal, CEO Sheops Nadia Patel Gangjee and Qazi Umair, Co-founder Botsify Talha Yasin, Founders WonderTree Muhammad Waqas and Muhammad Usman, Co-Founder Social Champ Sameer Ahmed Khan, and Founder ELN Sana Farooq.

Furthermore, several quick session were arranged for discussion of the topics like entrepreneurship, video-marketing, and the art of pitching. The speaker including CEO of NexDegree Imran Moinuddin, CEO of Venture Dive Atif Azim, online video-content specialist Salma Jafri and Jawwad Ahmed Farid who is a serial entrepreneur shared their valuable comments during their address to the event.

At the end, four marathon sessions of pitching, team formation, building and presentation, the judges announced the winners. ‘Mirror Magican’ and ‘Gardener’ were winner and runner respectively.

Final presentations were held on Sunday night and each team was given three minutes to pitch with two minutes being allotted to questions and answers. The judges included Faizan Siddiqi, Yusuf Jan, Rabia Garib, Raza Matin, Badar Khushnood, Syed Talha Izhar and Midhat Fatima. The judges scored the pitches and tallied results after the pitches were over.

Top winners

The winning startp was ‘Mirror Magician’, a mirror that would take a picture using augmented reality and picture automation while the runner up was ‘TrashIt’, a composting bin which enables people to dispose off their trash more efficiently.

The second runner up was ‘Gardener’, an online gardening service, which provides gardening services through an App.

Other winners were  ‘Auctee’, a real-time auctioning service through secure accounts and ‘Champion Mango’, a service offering premium mangos with great packaging through a variety of distribution channels.

The three winning teams were given trophies, while all attendees got participation certificates.

Other ideas pitched on the final day include:

TrafficWALA:  An app that provide real-time interactive updates about traffic.

ToYourTable: Delivering healthy homemade food with calorie count to the health-conscious

Secure & Private Internet: Helps you protect your privacy and secures you on the internet from malware

MyLearnHub: A safe online community to connect educators with students and parents

OrderBooker: An application to bring together all order bookers on one platform more an efficient business transaction

Community Call: An online forum to bring together all socially conscious people in the community to work together for a common cause

MeraGhar: An app that would visualise your dream house into a 3D drawing.

Delivery360: A high-tech online on-demand delivery platform

Frecr: An online social recommendations service & universal structured data provider

iMap: Drone mapping service for construction industry.

BizzUp: Boosting business performance by providing the best technology consultation/solutions

BookShare: An online platform to bring together all book enthusiast to buy and sell books

NowRewards: An online reward system for sharing Facebook content on personal profiles

DreamX: A 24/7 intelligent client service

About Nest I/O

The Nest i/O is a technology incubator launched by P@SHA, with its global partners Google for Entrepreneurs and Samsung. The Nest i/O aims to serve as a bridge between talent, opportunity & commercial development to the vibrant city of Karachi which is home to 15 million young people with dreams and talent.