National Incubation Center Sialkot and lead partner Mobilink Bank hosted an exclusive Meet-and-Greet Session designed to empower and elevate female founders across the region, led by Quratulain Chaudhary, Vice President for Women Financial Inclusion and Advocacy at Mobilink. Structuring the session around a bank’s dedicated women’s financial inclusion leadership rather than a generic networking format gave the event a specific institutional lens on the barriers women founders actually face when it comes to accessing capital and financial services.
The session brought together a notable cross-section of women leaders from Sialkot’s business community, including Gulzeb Waqas, Vice President of the Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry Sialkot, Nadia Qaiser, incoming Senior Vice President of the same organization, along with executive committee members, established women founders, and NIC Sialkot’s current incubation cohort. That mix, spanning chamber of commerce leadership, established business owners, and early-stage founders, gave the session a layered dynamic where more experienced women entrepreneurs could speak directly into the challenges facing newer founders still building their ventures.
The interactive format featured engaging activities alongside high-value discussions centered on local entrepreneurs’ operational pain points, women’s financial inclusion specifically, and actionable solutions rather than purely aspirational conversation. Addressing financial inclusion directly, rather than treating it as a background theme, reflects a recognition that access to formal banking and credit remains a persistent, concrete barrier for many women-led businesses in regional cities like Sialkot, where formal financial infrastructure serving women entrepreneurs specifically has historically been limited.
NIC Sialkot positioned itself as a central bridge connecting leaders across corporate, civic, industrial, and startup sectors, using the session to scale relationships between these otherwise separate communities and build a more unified, supportive ecosystem for women in business locally. With Ignite’s backing, the event reflects a broader pattern among Pakistan’s regional incubation centers of pairing formal banking partners with targeted community-building sessions, giving women founders in cities outside Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad more direct access to the financial institutions and business networks that can meaningfully support their growth.
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