The Sindh Enterprise Development Fund has held pitching sessions under its Sindh Start-Up Acceleration Program, bringing startups forward to present their business models, growth potential and plans as part of the grant evaluation process. The sessions are the stage at which the program moves from training and mentorship to funding decisions, since startups in the cohort have to make their case to evaluators before grants are awarded. SEDF described the initiative as an effort to turn promising ideas into investment ready ventures and to strengthen the startup ecosystem in Sindh by backing companies with the potential to scale. The announcement credited the IBA Center for Entrepreneurial Development, Innovation and Research and Sapphire Consulting Services, the two partners that run the program with SEDF. The post did not say how many startups pitched, when the sessions took place or how large the grants are, so the scale of the evaluation is not yet public.
The program has been built over the past year. SEDF, the IBA’s Centre for Entrepreneurial Development and Sapphire Consulting Services signed their agreement at SEDF’s Karachi headquarters in November 2025, in a deal reported as launching the first government supported startup accelerator in the province. The signatories were SEDF chief executive Khizar Pervaiz, IBA CED director Dr Lalarukh Ejaz and Faizan Gul Shaikh of Sapphire. The program was inaugurated at the IBA City Campus in May 2026 at an orientation ceremony for startups from across Sindh, where participating founders were given laptops. It describes itself as a hands on and execution focused journey rather than a classroom course, with more than 50 hours of advanced growth and scale up training, investor readiness work and pitch refinement, and selected founders are expected to treat their startup as their main professional focus while they take part.
The pitching sessions put that preparation to use. Evaluating startups on their business model, their growth potential and their plans gives the grant process a clear basis, because each company has to explain how it makes money, how it expects to grow and what it will do with funding. The program has also stressed inclusion. It encourages applications from women led ventures, founders from underserved communities and differently abled entrepreneurs, and an earlier deadline extension was aimed at revenue stage startups across the province, which suggests the cohort includes companies that already have customers rather than only early concepts.
For SEDF, which operates under the Sindh Investment Department, the program is one part of a wider effort to support enterprises in the province, alongside credit assistance, technical help and mark-up subsidies for micro, small and medium businesses. The announcement frames the pitching sessions as a way to identify ventures that are ready for investment and able to grow. What remains to be seen is which startups receive grants, how much funding they get and what the program does for them afterwards.
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