NIC Karachi’s Acceleration Cohort 3 explored the fundamentals of startup fundraising with Hiruy Ephrem from Orbit Ventures, gaining practical insights into understanding investors, navigating early stage capital, and building a strong fundraising approach. The session gave founders direct exposure to a working investor’s perspective, offering guidance that went beyond generic fundraising advice into more specific, actionable frameworks for approaching capital raises.
The session highlighted the importance of knowing your investor before seeking funding, an approach that encourages founders to research a potential investor’s focus areas, portfolio, and investment thesis before pitching, rather than approaching fundraising as a generic outreach exercise. This kind of targeted approach is generally considered more effective in securing investor interest compared to broad, unfiltered fundraising efforts.
Ephrem also emphasised the importance of tracking progress clearly and recognising that growth metrics matter alongside revenue, a point that speaks to how investors typically evaluate early stage startups. For companies that have not yet reached significant revenue scale, demonstrating strong growth trends and other key performance indicators can be equally important in building investor confidence, particularly during the earlier funding stages where revenue alone may not yet reflect a company’s full potential.
The session brought together Acceleration Cohort 3 startups including Fortanixor Technologies, Three Shelves, Lendverse, asani.io, and Porter Pakistan, giving founders across this specific cohort direct access to Ephrem’s expertise as part of their structured acceleration programme. This combination of startups, spanning different sectors and business models, reflects the diversity typically found within NIC Karachi’s accelerator cohorts, with the shared fundraising session giving each founder practical knowledge applicable to their own specific fundraising journey.
The event was supported by Tech Destination Pakistan, Ministry Of IT and Telecommunication, Ignite National Technology Fund, LMKT, LuckyOne Mall, and Orbit Ventures, reflecting the institutional network tied to NIC Karachi’s Acceleration Cohort 3 programming. The session adds to the incubator’s continued effort to equip founders with practical, investor informed knowledge, aiming to help startups approach their fundraising conversations with greater clarity and confidence as they move through the acceleration programme.
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