Accelerate Punjab has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the University of Southern Punjab Multan to speed up youth entrepreneurship, incubation, and venture development in the region, pairing a provincial incubation network with a university that already has access to a large student population in South Punjab. The agreement reflects a push to bring structured startup support to cities outside the province’s main tech hubs, where students and aspiring founders often have fewer places to turn for training and mentorship.
The MoU was signed by Ali Aqa Gardezi, Incubation Manager at the Accelerate Punjab Multan Centre, and Prof. Dr. Zahid H. Chohan, Director of the Office of Research, Innovation and Commercialization at the University of Southern Punjab Multan. Having the university’s research and commercialization office as the signing party is a useful detail, since ORIC units are typically the part of a university responsible for turning research and student projects into something that can reach the market, which makes them a natural counterpart for an incubation centre.
Both leaders spoke about a shared vision to equip students and aspiring founders with structured mentorship, startup training, and access to opportunities within the wider ecosystem. In practice, a partnership of this kind gives students a clearer route from classroom idea to incubation, while giving the Multan Centre a steady source of early-stage teams to work with. It also gives the university a way to show students that entrepreneurship is a realistic path alongside conventional employment, supported by an organisation that can provide programmes, mentors, and connections.
Accelerate Punjab operates alongside the PITB Incubation Wing and describes its work as empowering young innovators across the province, with updates and upcoming cohort applications shared on its LinkedIn page. For students at the University of Southern Punjab, the agreement signals that cohort calls and training programmes from the Multan Centre will be easier to reach, and it adds to a growing set of partnerships between provincial incubators and universities that aim to widen the pool of founders coming from South Punjab.
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