The Center for Entrepreneurial Development, Innovation and Research at the Institute of Business Administration in Karachi has officially launched the IBA CEDIR Directory and Ecosystem Intelligence, an online platform that brings startups, potential founders, programs, and ecosystem insights into one place. The center introduced the platform with a simple idea: who you know shapes how far you go. The launch comes as the institute marks 70 years, and it gives its entrepreneurship community a single searchable home for the people and companies that have passed through its programs.
Users can find startups, discover founders, and search by service or keyword, then connect through a privacy first request system. The center describes the aim in practical terms, saying a future cofounder or collaborator is only a few clicks away. The request system matters because it lets people reach out without exposing personal contact details, a feature that can make founders and students more willing to be listed in the first place. For a young entrepreneur looking for a technical partner, or a startup looking for a mentor or a service provider, a directory built around the institute’s own network offers a starting point that is more focused than a general professional site.
The platform also works as a data dashboard. According to the figures on its opening page, it holds 1,820 profiles in total, made up of 560 startup profiles and 1,260 certificate program participants. It lists 71 current startups, 15 faculty startups, and 20 startup categories, and it identifies Startup Studio as the largest startup program and software, software as a service, and enterprise technology as the dominant startup category. These ecosystem insights let visitors see which sectors and programs are producing the most companies, which is useful to founders choosing a direction, to investors looking for patterns, and to the institute itself as it plans future programs.
The directory is available through the center’s website, and the institute is inviting the public to start exploring it. Platforms of this kind depend on how many people take part, since a directory is only as useful as the profiles it holds and the connections it produces. The launch gives the institute’s graduates, program participants, and student founders a shared place to be found, and it gives outsiders a clear view of the entrepreneurial activity at one of the country’s leading business schools. As the center put it, every great startup has a network behind it, and the new platform is built to help that network grow.
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