National Incubation Center Peshawar has introduced its Advisory Council, a group of seven members who will guide the incubator’s work and support the growth of its startups. The council consists of Amjad Arbab, Illum Khan, Sanan Sethi, Faisal Khan, Hira Ilyas Choudhry, Amna Masood and Sami Syed. The incubator says the members bring diverse expertise and industry perspectives, and that their collective experience will help founders deal with business challenges, sharpen their strategies and build connections across industries.
An advisory council plays a different role from the day to day mentors that an incubator assigns to individual startups. Its members usually help shape the direction of the programme, advise on partnerships and priorities, and open doors to customers, investors and other organisations in their own sectors. For founders in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where access to experienced business leaders and established networks is more limited than in the large cities, having such a group attached to the incubator can make a real difference in how quickly a startup finds its first customers and its first investors.
National Incubation Center Peshawar was established in 2017 and works to foster innovation, entrepreneurship and technology development in the province. It is funded by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication and Ignite National Technology Fund, and it is run by a consortium led by LMKR. The incubator has supported more than 200 startups across its cohorts, and its latest phase is backed by more than 80 ecosystem supporters. The new council adds an advisory layer of experienced professionals to that structure.
The announcement does not give details of the members’ current roles or of how often the council will meet, and the incubator has not said whether it will take part in the selection of future cohorts. What it has made clear is the purpose of the council, which is to bring a wider range of expertise to the incubator and to help the founders it supports build stronger businesses.
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