Royella Foods, a startup incubated at National Incubation Center Faisalabad, has been awarded the UNESCO and Nestle Global Youth Grant, earning recognition for its work and potential to create meaningful impact within its sector. The award brought with it an invitation for Royella Foods founder Raees Ur Rehman to attend the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France, where he represented both his venture and Pakistan’s growing startup ecosystem on one of the world’s most recognised international platforms for youth innovation and development. The achievement marks one of the more significant international recognitions earned by a startup from the NIC Faisalabad ecosystem and reflects the degree to which Pakistani founders building in sectors such as food technology are producing work that resonates with global institutions evaluating impact and innovation on a worldwide scale.
The UNESCO and Nestle Global Youth Grant is a recognition that brings together the cultural and educational mandate of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization with Nestle’s long-standing investment in youth empowerment and sustainable food systems, targeting young entrepreneurs and innovators whose ventures demonstrate both commercial viability and the potential to generate positive social, environmental, or nutritional impact. For Royella Foods, the selection reflects an evaluation of the venture’s work against a global competitive field of youth-led initiatives, and the outcome places the company among a select group of international recipients whose recognition carries the institutional weight of two of the world’s most prominent organisations operating at the intersection of development, education, and the food industry.
Raees Ur Rehman’s visit to UNESCO Headquarters in Paris as part of the award provided him with exposure to the international community of innovators, policymakers, and institutional leaders whose work shapes the global discourse around youth entrepreneurship and sustainable food systems. For a founder building a food venture in Faisalabad, one of Pakistan’s most significant industrial and agricultural cities, this kind of international platform access represents a qualitative shift in visibility and network that is difficult to achieve through domestic channels alone and that can open pathways to partnerships, investment conversations, and market opportunities that would otherwise remain inaccessible. The representation of Pakistan’s startup ecosystem through Royella Foods at a UNESCO platform also contributes to the growing body of international evidence that Pakistani founders are building ventures of sufficient quality and impact to earn recognition at the highest global levels.
NIC Faisalabad’s announcement of Royella Foods’ achievement reflects the centre’s pride in a startup that has moved from local incubation to international recognition within a trajectory that demonstrates what structured incubation support, combined with a founder’s commitment to building something genuinely impactful, can produce. For the broader startup community in Faisalabad and across Pakistan, the UNESCO and Nestle Global Youth Grant earned by Royella Foods serves as a concrete and inspiring example of the international reach that Pakistani food technology and impact-driven startups can achieve when they build with both quality and purpose. The achievement is backed by the institutional framework of the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication and Ignite, within whose national incubation programme Royella Foods developed the foundation from which this international recognition has followed.
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