Two startups incubated under Iqra University’s IU CORE, HandsOn Communicator and Mediweb, have secured a place among the Top 28 startups out of more than 435 entries at the Lok Sahita STEM Talent Program 2026, giving the university’s entrepreneurship center a concrete result to point to after six months of programming. Reaching the top 28 out of a field that large signals meaningful traction for both ventures, since a competition of that scale typically filters out a substantial share of entrants before reaching a shortlist small enough to be considered genuinely competitive.
Both startups received Medals of Recognition at the program, a detail that suggests the evaluation went beyond a simple shortlist and involved formal assessment of the teams’ innovation and problem-solving approach. While the specific focus areas of HandsOn Communicator and Mediweb were not detailed in the announcement, their inclusion in a national STEM-focused talent search points to ventures built around applied technical problem solving rather than purely commercial or consumer-facing concepts, the kind of work that STEM talent programs are typically designed to surface and reward.
For IU CORE, the Centre of Research and Entrepreneurship at Iqra University, the result offers a tangible marker of the center’s ability to take student ideas through six months of structured support and produce ventures capable of competing against startups from across the country. University-based incubation centers in Pakistan often struggle to demonstrate outcomes beyond internal cohort completions, so external validation through a large-scale, third-party program like Lok Sahita gives IU CORE a stronger basis for showing that its support model translates into results its startups can carry into other competitive and funding environments.
The recognition also reflects a broader pattern within Pakistan’s university incubation landscape, where centers increasingly measure success not just by how many startups they admit into a cohort but by how those startups perform once they leave the incubator’s immediate environment and compete on a national stage. With HandsOn Communicator and Mediweb now carrying a Top 28 placement and formal medals of recognition, IU CORE has a fresh data point to support its case as founders inside its ecosystem move from early ideation toward external validation and, potentially, further funding or partnership opportunities down the line.
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