On 13th of January 2018, The National Incubation Center, NIC Peshawar opens its doors to tech startups and entrepreneurs. The Center was inaugurated by the Honorable Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, accompanied by the Federal Minister for IT, Anoosha Rehman, CEO Ignite Fund Yusuf Hussain, CEO PTCL Daniel Ritz and CEO LMKT Atif Raees Khan.
NIC Peshawar is an Innovation hub focused on young innovators and entrepreneurs & helping them transform industries that impact millions of lives every day. Young people often possess brilliant business ideas but lack required resources to turn their ideas into a profitable business venture. It is a state of the art facility designed and operated by LMKT in collaboration with PTCL along with Microsoft, IBM and Founder Institute. With funding from ICT R&D Fund.
On the day of the launch Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, said,
“I’m extremely pleased with the growing synergy between the public and private sectors to promote youth-led entrepreneurship in the country and realize the dream of a Digital Pakistan.”He further added,
“NIC Peshawar is proof of the government’s commitment of extending all kinds of support to relevant stakeholders in developing Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s technology landscape and startup ecosystem.”
Minister of State for Information Technology and Telecommunication, Anusha Rahman, while expressing her satisfaction with the launch proceedings, stated
“National Incubation Center, Peshawar will usher a vibrant new era of entrepreneurship and innovation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, enabling many aspiring tech entrepreneurs and startups in creating game-changing solutions.”
She added, “Ministry of IT&T is constantly striving towards transforming Pakistan into a knowledge-based economy through various sustainable ICT initiatives.”
Hussain, CEO, Ignite said,
“A singular opportunity for Startups that seek to solve meaningful problems with the help of Academia and for Corporates that seek to transform and thrive in this age of global competition and pervasive change by partnering with and investing in Startups.”
President & CEO PTCL, Dr. Daniel Ritz, on the occasion, stated
“The National Incubation Center, Peshawar is an important milestone in the burgeoning innovation climate of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. This center is a testimony to PTCL’s promise to empower the people of Pakistan through its ICT and Digital services.”
Atif Khan, CEO LMKT said,
“Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has enormous untapped talent and potential that can become a major driver in boosting Pakistan’s economy. I’m really excited about the prospect of working with inventive local entrepreneurs and startups in our pursuit for creating success stories bigger than ours.”
Since then NIC Peshawar has been received very positively by academia, public and private sectors with significant partnerships and MoUs lined up with leading organizations and universities. Some of these collaborations include design thinking workshops by IBM, FinTech lab, BioTech & CNC lab by CECOS University and linkages with Google Business Groups.
The first objective of NIC Peshawar is not just to promote entrepreneurship, but in particular to support and catalyze the creation of disruptive, innovative product-based tech startups that scale and transform, and provide a significant market and economic impact by efficiently allocating assets and resources, reducing market distortions, reducing transaction time and cost, and changing the way people live, work and play. The second objective is to assess the needs of the communities and businesses that are intended to benefit from the incubator.
