National Incubation Center Peshawar has begun the journey of Cohort 16 with an orientation for its newest founders. The session brought the founders together to meet the incubator’s team, connect with fellow entrepreneurs and learn about the support and opportunities that lie ahead. The incubator said that over the coming months ideas will be tested, strategies refined and businesses built, and it welcomed the cohort to the programme.

The orientation is the first formal step after selection, and it gives founders a clear picture of what the incubator offers and what it expects. Founders normally use these sessions to meet the programme team and the supporters that work with the incubator, to find out how mentorship and training will run, and to get to know the other startups in the same cohort, who will become a peer group during the programme. For many of them, it is also the first time they can compare notes with other founders from across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

National Incubation Center Peshawar was established in 2017 and is funded by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication and Ignite National Technology Fund. It is run by a consortium led by LMKR and LMKT, and it works with Orbit Startups, Accelerate Prosperity, Sybrid and several universities and institutions, including IM Sciences, Rehman Medical Institute and CECOS University. It has supported more than 200 startups across its earlier cohorts.

Cohort 16 follows a busy period at the incubator, which opened applications for the cohort earlier in the year and has since held outreach sessions, an investor programme and awards information sessions for the province’s startups. The incubator did not say how many startups joined the cohort or share their names in this announcement, and further details of the programme schedule are expected to follow through its official channels.

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