Pakistan hosts World’s leading Investors and tech leaders at 021Disrupt Conference

KARACHI: Pakistan’s biggest entrepreneurship conference “021 Disrupt” attracted top venture capital firms and tech celebrities from the Middle East, Singapore and the US.

The 2-Day Conference in Karachi, organized by The Nest I/O, hosted over 25 institutional investors and 200 startups.

Local and international speakers conducted interactive workshops on key technology trends that are shaping the future. 

For the first time in Pakistan’s history, startups got the opportunity to directly interact with leading investors who had invested in global household names such as Careem, Udemy, Behance, Canva and Stripe to name a few.

Some of the leading international investors that participated in the conference included Abraaj Capital, Wamda Capital, Golden Gate Ventures, Middle East Venture Partners, Wadi Accelerator, Sarmayacar and 500 Startups.

Apart from international investors, sixteen institutional investors from Pakistan also attended to search for investable startups. 

Speaking at the conference, Jehan Ara President of P@SHA and The Nest I/O said “We conceived this conference in the hope of bringing together players from the local and international startup ecosystem to spark meaningful conversations and ignite interesting and innovative ideas that could solve the global challenges we are faced with today.

”In order for our ecosystem to grow it is important that the requisite support is provided to the talented young entrepreneurs in this country, she said.

The conference is hosting Pakistan’s largest Investor Roundtable with over twenty five institutional investors.

One of the investors,Charles Ludwig from Oman Technology Fund (OTF), said that 021 Disrupt marks the beginning of a new era of openness and innovation for Pakistan. 

The Nest I/O is a technology incubator set up by P@SHA. It was launched in January 2015 with grants from Google for Entrepreneurs, Samsung and the US State Department.

As of October 2017, the Nest I/O has incubated 117 startups in the retail, education, fintech, healthcare, mobile gaming and special needs segments.