The Higher Education Commission (HEC) under Higher Education Development in Pakistan (HEDP) organised a week-long training programme for Business Incubation Centres in Islamabad.
The training was held in collaboration with Invest2Innovate (i2i), a leading organisation that supports start-up communities. It was attended by Directors/Managers of 17 Business Incubation Centres (BICs) from higher education institutions of Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and AJK.
BIC Managers will be supporting the young and budding entrepreneurs during this training to help them incubate their innovative start-up ideas into sustainable, profit-giving businesses. The training was focused on providing complete hand-holding to start-ups from induction and incubation to formal graduation.
The training plan had been designed in accordance with the BICs Needs Assessment held in a one-on-one session with respective BICs recently. The training covered A to Z of programme design for executing a successful incubation programme including research and rapid product prototyping, road mapping start-up’s journey, business development, revenue generation, building a financial narrative, and investment readiness.
In her opening remarks, Director (R&D) HEC Noshaba Awais offered her full support to the BIC teams. During the training, the participants were briefed about their significant roles in the Innovator Seed Fund (ISF) grant. ISF is a unique national-level seed-funding programme where HEC, along with its partner BICs, is implementing this activity to provide a combination of capacity plus seed-funding support to innovative start-ups in a blended format. The grant winners will receive up to $35,000 in seed funding along with technical support from BICs.
“Aligned with HEC’s mission these Innovator Seed Fund Grants are the key components of HEDP Project launched for the very first time. HEDP will be holistically supporting the development of entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem hence will play a key role in transforming Pakistan into a knowledge economy,” said Executive Director HEC, Dr Shaista Sohail in the context of the ISF Capacity Building Programme and upcoming award ceremony.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 31st, 2022.