National Incubation Center Hyderabad is hosting the next installment of its Future Forward Startup Playbook Series on Thursday, June 11, 2026, from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM at the NIC Hyderabad premises, with the session titled Scaling Startups in the Age of Data Intelligence. The session features Dr Samantha Buxton, Trainer at Swansea University in the United Kingdom, and Sheikh Hammad Amjad, Certified Professional Coach and Mentor, as the lead speakers. Registration is open through the official link at lnkd.in/dDknCPAk, and the session is part of a broader series designed to bring founders, innovators, and industry experts together around the trends and ideas shaping the future of business in Pakistan and beyond.
The Future Forward Startup Playbook Series is positioned as a recurring platform for substantive, practitioner-led conversations about the specific disciplines and mindsets that founders need to navigate the challenges of building and scaling in a rapidly evolving business environment. The data intelligence focus of this particular session reflects a growing consensus across the global startup community that the ability to collect, interpret, and act on data is no longer a technical capability reserved for well-resourced technology companies but a foundational competency that every founder needs to develop if they want to make the kind of smarter, more informed decisions that separate ventures that scale from those that stagnate. For startups at the early and growth stages, the challenge is rarely a shortage of data but a shortage of the frameworks and skills needed to turn that data into actionable insight.
Dr Samantha Buxton brings to the session her expertise from Swansea University’s applied research environment, where data science and its practical applications to business and organisational decision-making form a central part of her work. Her involvement in NIC Hyderabad’s programming reflects the centre’s commitment to bringing international academic expertise into direct contact with Pakistan’s startup community, giving founders access to knowledge and frameworks that are grounded in rigorous research rather than anecdotal observation. Sheikh Hammad Amjad, whose background as a Business Therapist and professional coach gives him a practical, operationally grounded perspective on how founders can apply strategic and analytical frameworks to the real challenges they face, provides the locally grounded facilitation that makes the session’s content immediately applicable rather than requiring significant translation before it becomes useful. Together, the two speakers offer a combination of analytical depth and practical coaching orientation that gives participants both the conceptual tools and the confidence to begin applying data intelligence approaches to their own ventures.
The session will explore how startups can harness data intelligence to uncover market opportunities, develop a deeper understanding of their customers, and build the kind of evidence-based decision-making culture that supports sustainable growth rather than growth built on assumptions that eventually prove costly to correct. In an environment where every customer interaction, market shift, and product usage pattern generates potentially valuable information, the founders who build the capability to capture and interpret that information systematically are building a structural advantage that compounds over time. NIC Hyderabad’s Future Forward Startup Playbook Series, supported by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication, Ignite, PTCL, LMKT, and Tech Destination Pakistan, alongside partners Swansea University, QA Consultants, and BizTherapist, continues to bring this quality of programming to Hyderabad’s startup community. Founders ready to develop their data intelligence capabilities are encouraged to register at lnkd.in/dDknCPAk ahead of the June 11 session.
Follow the SPIN IDG WhatsApp Channel for updates across the Smart Pakistan Insights Network covering all of Pakistan’s technology ecosystem.


