The Entrepreneurship Support Organization Council held its Inaugural Industry Incubation Roundtable at National Incubation Center Karachi, bringing together serial entrepreneurs, senior industry leaders, ESO experts, and representatives from academia for a focused discussion centred on how startups access and mobilise resources. The gathering marked the first edition of what organisers positioned as a recurring roundtable format aimed at strengthening coordination across Pakistan’s incubation and entrepreneurship support landscape.
The session was led and chaired by Raza Abbas, Chairperson of the ESO Council and Head of Incubation at Institute of Business Management, and co-moderated by Engineer Parkash Lohana, Director of the Office of Research, Innovation and Commercialization at Muhammad Ali Jinnah University. Their joint leadership of the discussion brought together perspectives from two different institutions actively involved in supporting entrepreneurship and research commercialisation within Pakistan’s academic sector.
A number of serial entrepreneurs, senior industry leaders, and representatives of international organisations contributed to the roundtable, including Azhar Rizvi, Junaid Naqi, Asad Abdulla, Asif Riaz Shaikh, Imran Azeem, Amina Ahmed Raza, Palwashay Arbab, and Fawad Khan, each representing different incubation centres or ORIC departments across the country. Their combined participation brought a wide range of experience to the table, spanning entrepreneurship facilitation, incubation leadership, and academic research commercialisation.
The roundtable’s central focus on startup resource mobilisation reflects a persistent challenge within Pakistan’s entrepreneurship ecosystem, where incubators and support organisations often work independently of one another despite facing overlapping constraints around funding, mentorship capacity, and access to industry partnerships. By bringing ESO leaders and academic representatives into direct dialogue, the roundtable appears aimed at identifying more coordinated approaches to addressing these shared challenges across different incubation centres and university based programmes.
The event was supported by Tech Destination Pakistan, Ministry Of IT and Telecommunication, Ignite National Technology Fund, LMKT, LuckyOne Mall, and Orbit Ventures, reflecting the institutional network tied to NIC Karachi’s ongoing programming. Organisers described the insights shared during the roundtable as directly relevant to shaping how Pakistan’s incubation ecosystem supports its next generation of founders, suggesting the discussion may inform future collaboration or policy decisions among the ESO Council’s member organisations going forward.
Follow the SPIN IDG WhatsApp Channel for updates across the Smart Pakistan Insights Network covering all of Pakistan’s technology ecosystem.
