National Incubation Center Hyderabad hosted Pitch It Better, a session designed to bring together aspiring founders and Cohort 9 applicants to prepare for the next stage of their startup journey by refining how they communicate their vision, structure their story, and present their ideas in a way that investors can understand, remember, and ultimately back. The session drew an overwhelming response, with a room packed full of participants actively working on strengthening their pitches, reflecting the genuine appetite among Hyderabad’s founder community for the kind of structured, honest feedback that can meaningfully improve their ability to compete in subsequent stages of NIC Hyderabad’s cohort selection and broader fundraising processes.
The session was built around the principle that even strong startup ideas can fail to gain traction with investors and selection committees if the founder behind them cannot communicate the concept clearly, compellingly, and memorably within the limited time that most pitch settings allow. For many first-time and early-stage founders, the discipline of pitch communication represents an entirely distinct skill set from the technical, operational, or domain expertise that led them to identify their business opportunity in the first place, and sessions like Pitch It Better address this gap directly by giving founders a structured opportunity to test their pitch against experienced evaluators before facing the higher-stakes environment of an actual cohort selection or investor meeting.
The panel of judges, comprising M. Farhan Iqbal, Muhammad Ghayas Uddin, and Imran Azeem, brought practical insights and asked the kind of probing questions that genuinely test whether a founder has thought through the fundamental aspects of their business and can communicate that thinking persuasively under direct scrutiny. The judges’ feedback was specifically designed to push ideas forward, providing founders with concrete, actionable guidance on how to strengthen their pitches rather than simply offering encouragement or general commentary that leaves founders without a clear sense of how to improve.
For Cohort 9 applicants specifically, the session represented a valuable opportunity to stress-test their pitch ahead of the formal selection process for NIC Hyderabad’s next cohort, giving them a chance to identify and address weaknesses in their presentation before facing the actual evaluation that will determine their admission. For the broader group of aspiring founders who attended without being formal Cohort 9 applicants, the session offered equally valuable exposure to the standards and expectations that effective pitching requires, building pitch communication capability that will serve them regardless of which specific programme or funding opportunity they eventually pursue. NIC Hyderabad’s continued investment in this kind of practical, skills-focused programming, backed by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication, Ignite, PTCL, and LMKT, reflects the centre’s understanding that building a strong pipeline of investable startups requires addressing the communication and presentation skills that often determine whether genuinely promising ventures succeed in capturing the attention and confidence of the investors and selection committees who control access to capital and structured support.
Follow the SPIN IDG WhatsApp Channel for updates across the Smart Pakistan Insights Network covering all of Pakistan’s technology ecosystem.
