The Business Incubation Center at the University of Peshawar scheduled Session 03 of its Cohort 3 program for Thursday, October 22, 2026, with a focus on value propositions and business models. The session was led by Karishma Zakaullah, a Digital Inclusion Consultant at The World Bank Group, and held at the center on the university campus. The center framed the session around a simple principle: turning a startup idea into a viable business begins with understanding the value it offers, and that understanding has to come from customers rather than from the founder’s own assumptions.
Founders in the cohort were set to explore value propositions, business model frameworks, revenue strategies, and ways to test their riskiest assumptions. Each of these topics addresses a stage where early companies often go wrong. A value proposition explains in plain terms why a customer should choose a product, a business model describes how the company will earn money while delivering it, and revenue strategy sets out how that income will grow over time. Testing the riskiest assumptions is the step that ties the others together, since the parts of a plan that founders are least sure about are the ones most likely to sink the business if they prove wrong.
The session aimed to help founders turn early customer insights into actionable business strategies. By the third session of the program, Cohort 3 founders have typically begun speaking with potential customers, and the task becomes how to use what they have learned. A founder who has heard repeated complaints from customers, for instance, must decide which problem is worth solving, which customers will pay, and what the product must include to be worth buying. Working through those questions with an experienced trainer gives participants a structured way to move from interviews and observations to a plan they can test in the market.
Karishma Zakaullah brings a background in digital inclusion at the World Bank Group, an area that deals with how people and small businesses gain access to digital tools and services. That perspective can be useful for founders building products for customers who are new to technology, a common situation in markets such as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The center did not share the number of founders in the cohort or the exercises planned for the day. What the announcement made clear is that the program is working through the core building blocks of a startup in sequence, and that Session 03 is the point at which Cohort 3 founders were asked to define the value they offer and the business that will deliver it.
Follow the SPIN IDG WhatsApp Channel for updates across the Smart Pakistan Insights Network covering all of Pakistan’s technology ecosystem.
