Sabina Babayeva, Head of Hub at Tenity, joined a recent startup pitch session at NICAT to evaluate presentations from the incubator’s cohort, leaving with a strongly positive assessment of the quality on display. Babayeva, who leads Tenity’s hub operations and has worked extensively across the firm’s innovation programmes in multiple regions, described the overall standard of the pitches as excellent, noting the strength of innovation shown across the startups she reviewed.
According to Babayeva’s remarks, the presentations reflected a level of preparation and quality that stood out during her evaluation, though she pointed to global expansion planning as an area where startups could push further. Her comments suggested that while the core innovation and product development among the startups met a high standard, the next step for many of these ventures lies in building out more ambitious plans for scaling beyond Pakistan’s domestic market and into international territory.
The pitch session forms part of NICAT’s ongoing work supporting startups across aerospace, aviation, deep tech, and defense technologies, with the incubator continuing to bring in external evaluators such as Babayeva to assess the quality of ventures moving through its programme. NICAT, which operates out of National Aerospace Science and Technology Park in Rawalpindi, has built its model around a public private innovation ecosystem, working with startups that typically arrive with a prototype, minimum viable product, or a solution ready to scale technically and commercially.
Tenity, the organisation Babayeva represents, has continued to operate across multiple international markets as a venture capital and innovation services firm, running incubation and acceleration programmes for startups in sectors spanning fintech, healthtech, and beyond. Her involvement in evaluating NICAT’s startups reflects a broader pattern of international investors and programme leaders engaging directly with Pakistan’s aerospace and deep tech startup ecosystem, offering local founders exposure to perspectives shaped by global venture capital and innovation programme experience.
The announcement was shared alongside acknowledgements of Ignite National Technology Fund, Ministry Of IT and Telecommunication, NETSOL Technologies, National Aerospace Science and Technology Park, Air University, and Pakistan Aeronautical Complex Kamra, reflecting the institutional network tied to NICAT’s operations. Babayeva’s feedback, alongside her call for stronger global expansion plans among the startups she reviewed, adds to the ongoing dialogue between NICAT’s founders and the investors and mentors who continue to support their development, with organisers extending thanks to the broader group of investors, mentors, and partners involved in the incubator’s work.
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