Govt's Pakistan Startup Fund will help entrepreneurs raise up to $1m
Syed Azfar Hussain, Project Director NIC Karachi, explained to Business Recorder that if a startup raises venture capital money, the government will add funds on top of this to bring the total round to as much as a million dollars.
So for instance, if a startup is able to raise $700,000, the government will top this with $300,000. Similarly if someone raises $900,000, the government will add $100,000, he said.
'The government will inject up to 30% of a million dollars,' Azfar explained, 'with 30% being the ceiling and 10% being the floor.'
It is hoped 'this will encourage VCs to complete a bigger round for startups,' he added.
According to MOITT's website, PSF is aimed at promoting the growth of startups in Pakistan through encouraging investments in Pakistan by global as well as local VC funds.
'The grant is positioned as the final piece of the financial puzzle, providing startups with additional support after after venture capitalists have conducted their due diligence and the startup has secured funding from the private sector, the website states.
'The grant from the Pakistan Startup Fund will only be disbursed to the eligible startup as the 'last cheque' in the ongoing funding round. This means that the startup must secure the full investment from the investor or VC before receiving the fund's grant,' the website explained.
Another initiative, called BridgeStart, was also launched at the summit. Azfar explained that it aims to give startups international exposure and help with financing for those that get accepted into incubators and accelerator programmes abroad.
According to a press release, both initiatives 'marks a pivotal step in institutionalizing startup investment infrastructure in the country.'
'Hosting the regional launch of the Pakistan Startup Fund and BridgeStart Pakistan in Karachi is not just symbolic, it's a declaration that Karachi's talent and energy are central to Pakistan's innovation future,' said Hussain.
Google Cloud Startup Foundry Day
Another highlight of the summit was the Google Cloud Startup Foundry Day where Esna Ong, Regional Startup Success Manager, Google Cloud, highlighted the service's growing footprint in Pakistan and its commitment to supporting local startups with tailored cloud solutions, mentorship, and scale-enabling technologies.
Meanwhile Kathleen Chiu, Data & AI Specialist, Google Cloud, delivered a deep dive into AI platform Gemini, showcasing how machine learning is transforming startup decision-making and business modeling from the ground up.
'Our collaboration with Google Cloud unlocks global expertise for local entrepreneurs,' said Azfar.
'It bridges the knowledge gap and ensures our startups have access to the best tools and mentorship available anywhere in the world.'
Demo day
Over 25 emerging ventures - from FinTech and edtech to AI, SaaS, sustainability, and consumer tech - pitched their businesses to local investors at the summit.
According to a press release, several investors scheduled follow-up calls and office hours with founders whose pitches sparked interest and alignment.
Investor Ashraf Kaleem from Magnus Ventures engaged in discussions with startups including:
Atfaal - a startup dedicated to empowering women in the garment industry
Biomic - which works on advanced prosthetic technology
Blinq - a B2B Fintech, offering services in bill and payment aggregation space
Chaajao - digital learning platform
Haprow - which has created an educational robot companion for children
She6 - a fashion startup that aims to empower women through stylish and affordable hijabs and abayas.
One interesting announcement that came post-event was that energy consulting firm ENERLYTICS said it secured a project with PSO Renewable Energy Company (PSORE) for the real-time monitoring of their solar power plant.
'This milestone marks a significant step forward in our mission to accelerate the digital transformation of Pakistan's energy sector,' it said.
As part of the project, ENERLYTICS will deploy its energy monitoring platform to provide PSORE with real-time insights, performance analytics, and preventive maintenance alerts for their solar assets.
The system will be integrated with payment gateways, enabling energy tracking and billing functionalities — 'setting a new benchmark for smart energy infrastructure in the region.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Recorder
10-08-2025
- Business Recorder
Digital Economy Enhancement Project: MoUs between MoITT, provincial govts still pending: World Bank
ISLAMABAD: The World Bank has pointed out that the memorandum of understandings (MoUs) between the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication (MoITT) and the provincial governments, as laid down in the financing agreement of 'Digital Economy Enhancement Project' (DEEP) of $78 million, are still pending. Official documents of the Bank also stressed on stronger coordination among the project implementation entities and service providers in the federal and provincial governments for on-boarding of provincial and local government services. The project has made good progress in implementation status and results report (ISR) period. The three designated accounts have been opened, disbursements have begun, project staff has been recruited, and procurement processes for key consultancies and IT infrastructure are under way. The establishment of the national data exchange layer and digital identification ecosystem has been affirmed as a priority for the federal government. However, stronger coordination is needed among the project implementation entities and service providers in the federal and provincial governments for on-boarding of provincial and local government services. The MoUs between the MoITT and the provincial governments, as laid down in the Financing Agreement, are still pending. The Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication in collaboration with the World Bank is implementing DEEP. The main objective of the programme is 'to enhance the government's capacity for digitally enabled public services delivery for citizens and businesses.' The DEEP proposes a whole of government approach to develop the framework and technology that will increase access to and promote the use of digital services across Pakistan. The project will develop Pakistan Digital Government Enterprise Architecture, which will create a government ecosystem transcending existing processes, including by mapping roles and responsibilities and setting key principles across technology, business, information, and service design. This digitalisation will not only provide ease to citizens and businesses but would also enable higher degree of transparency, lower the cost of processing, and increase the tax collection capabilities of the federal and provincial governments, which is one of the priority focus areas of the government. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
Express Tribune
01-08-2025
- Express Tribune
Google unveils Gemini 2.5 Deep Think, its most advanced AI model
Google has introduced Gemini 2.5 Deep Think, its most advanced AI reasoning model, capable of processing multiple ideas at once to provide the best solution. This new model runs multiple agents in parallel, using computational resources to explore various possibilities before selecting the most accurate answer. Unveiled in May 2025 at Google I/O, Gemini 2.5 Deep Think is the first publicly available multi-agent AI from the company. It recently helped Google win a gold medal at the International Math Olympiad (IMO), where its version solved complex mathematical problems. For researchers, scientists, and academics tackling hard problems: Gemini 2.5 Deep Think is here. 🤯 It doesn't just answer, it brainstorms using parallel thinking and reinforcement learning techniques. We put it into the hands of mathematicians who explored what it can do ↓ — Google DeepMind (@GoogleDeepMind) August 1, 2025 Available to Google's Ultra plan subscribers, priced at $250 per month, Gemini 2.5 Deep Think is housed in the Gemini app. Google is now sharing its IMO-winning model with a select group of academics and researchers. Unlike traditional models, this system can take hours to reason, making it invaluable for academic use cases, as reported by Tech Crunch. Gemini 2.5 Deep Think also performed impressively on the Humanity's Last Exam (HLE), scoring 34.8%, surpassing competitors like xAI's Grok 4 and OpenAI's o3. The AI integrates with tools like code execution and Google Search, providing more detailed and creative responses than most models. It has shown potential to transform fields like research and development. While multi-agent systems are more resource-intensive than traditional models, Google has made the Gemini 2.5 Deep Think available through its premium subscription to fund the necessary infrastructure. Google plans to roll out Gemini 2.5 Deep Think to select testers via the Gemini API to understand its use in business and development, further solidifying its AI leadership.
Express Tribune
24-07-2025
- Express Tribune
Human mathematicians best AI in competition
Humans beat generative AI models made by Google and OpenAI at a top international mathematics competition, despite the programs reaching gold-level scores for the first time, reported AFP. Neither model scored full marks — unlike five young people at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), a prestigious annual competition where participants must be under 20 years old. Google said that an advanced version of its Gemini chatbot had solved five out of the six maths problems set at the IMO, held in Australia's Queensland this month. "We can confirm that Google DeepMind has reached the much-desired milestone, earning 35 out of a possible 42 points — a gold medal score," the US tech giant cited IMO president Gregor Dolinar as saying. "Their solutions were astonishing in many respects. IMO graders found them to be clear, precise and most of them easy to follow." Around 10 per cent of human contestants won gold-level medals, and five received perfect scores of 42 points. US ChatGPT maker OpenAI said that its experimental reasoning model had scored a gold-level 35 points on the test. The result "achieved a longstanding grand challenge in AI" at "the world's most prestigious math competition," OpenAI researcher Alexander Wei wrote on social media. "We evaluated our models on the 2025 IMO problems under the same rules as human contestants," he said. "For each problem, three former IMO medalists independently graded the model's submitted proof." Google achieved a silver-medal score at last year's IMO in the British city of Bath, solving four of the six problems. That took two to three days of computation - far longer than this year, when its Gemini model solved the problems within the 4.5-hour time limit, it said. The IMO said tech companies had "privately tested closed-source AI models on this year's problems," the same ones faced by 641 competing students from 112 countries.
