National Incubation Center Hyderabad is hosting an online Zoom session titled Building Traction Before Approaching Investors on Monday, June 16, 2026, from 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM, featuring Zayaan Bawany, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ticket Wala, as the lead speaker. Registration is open through the official link at lnkd.in/dRqJvRSB and the session is designed for startup founders who are preparing for the fundraising process and want to understand what building meaningful traction actually looks like, why it matters to investors before they engage seriously with a funding conversation, and how to create the kind of measurable momentum that gives a fundraising effort a foundation stronger than the idea alone.
The session addresses a fundamental dynamic in early-stage startup fundraising that many first-time founders discover only after their initial investor conversations have not gone as expected, which is that investors do not primarily evaluate ideas in isolation but assess the evidence that those ideas are resonating with a real market in ways that can be measured, demonstrated, and built upon. Traction, in the investment evaluation context, is the collective term for that evidence, encompassing metrics such as active users, revenue, customer retention, partnership commitments, pilot programme results, and any other quantifiable indicator that the product or service is finding genuine acceptance among the people it is designed to serve. A founder who can walk into an investor conversation with a clear and credible account of the traction they have built is in a fundamentally stronger position than one who is asking an investor to evaluate their potential based on projections and assertions alone, and the gap between those two positions is often what determines whether a fundraising conversation progresses or stalls.
Zayaan Bawany’s experience building Ticket Wala, an events and ticketing platform that has developed its own market presence and user base, gives him a grounded, practitioner perspective on what building traction in a real market actually involves, including the specific decisions, experiments, and persistence required to generate the kind of evidence that investors find credible. His approach to the session, which centres on unpacking why early traction becomes one of a startup’s biggest advantages, is oriented toward giving founders a practical understanding of the relationship between market validation, measurable progress, and fundraising readiness that they can apply directly to the stage their own venture is currently at. The session will address how founders can strengthen their market validation efforts, which metrics and forms of evidence matter most to investors at different stages, and how to enter fundraising conversations with the clarity and confidence that comes from having done the preparation work that traction building requires.
NIC Hyderabad’s Future Forward Startup Playbook Series, of which this session forms a part, continues to deliver programming that addresses the specific disciplines most relevant to the founders building within its community and across Pakistan’s broader startup ecosystem. The online Zoom format makes the session accessible to founders regardless of their location, and the 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM window is designed to fit within a working day without requiring participants to give up an entire afternoon. The session is supported by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication, Ignite, PTCL, LMKT, and Tech Destination Pakistan. Founders who are approaching a fundraising process or who want to build the traction foundation that will make that process more effective when they are ready to undertake it are encouraged to register at lnkd.in/dRqJvRSB before the June 16 session.
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