LUMS Startup Weekend Lahore remained in news for weeks. Even after it has concluded, it still remains topic of interest for many.

The Startup weekend is believed to be one of the most famous and largest festivals for entrepreneurs.
The event was brought to you by the partnership of Karandaaz Pakistan and LUMS.

The competition was won by ‘Paycard‘, a NFC payment solution.

Paycard idea was to to improve the existing payment solutions by using an NFC-enabled prepaid card which can be charged up to 5000-PKR at a time through the easy load. Retailers and sellers can enable a simple swipe-based payment method through Paycard merchant for customers. Customer must have Paycard to complete transaction.

Karandaaz aims to create a developed Pakistan. It aims financial and digital development in Pakistan. It believes that it is only possible when the people related to these fields interact with each other to widen their perspective and produce amazing work. The startup weekend was part of its aim; the event brought together people including entrepreneurs and mentors.

For the 8tth time LUMS has held the startup weekend. Entrepreneurs from all across the Pakistan made it to the event to contribute their efforts towards the development.

On the first day 60 entrepreneurs shared their idea and only 11 best ideas were selected for the final round.
To prepare, collect material and arrange it the participants were given 70 hours.

When the teams were ready with their presentations they were given just five minutes to open up their idea, answer the jury and conclude. These 5 minutes were enough to decide the winner of the Startup Weekend.

The news of the Startup Weekend Lahore winner was announced in a press release. The press release also stated that NFC payment solution, ‘Paycard’ won the competition as their idea was unique and beneficial.

On the second rank was ‘Groupie’, a way to merge individual pictures of friends into one large group photo. The third place was acquired by ‘Home Grown’ that promoted horticulture.

The seven other of the eleven shortlisted startup ideas included:

1) Freshalla – the fruit delivery website and app,
2) Pakfit – a platform that connects professionals with individuals looking to get in shape,
3) Pak Builds – a digital marketplace for material services providers and contractors,
4) Health Monitoring System – a wearable health monitoring and notification device,
5) Kabara Online – a digital marketplace to sell goods a person doesn’t need any more,
6) Animatica Math – a personalized animation app to encourage kids’ interest in mathematics,
7) Dream X – an Urdu digital assistant which can interpret and run commands given to it in Urdu language.

Honorary mention:

When the awards were announced in Startup Weekend Lahore  the ‘Proximate’ that aims to provide users with relevant ads when they pass near a proximate beacon installed on any retail outlet, received an honorary mention.

Ali Sarfaraz Hussain the CEO Karandaaz Pakistan said,

“We feel privileged to be part of LUMS Startup Weekend Lahore to inspire youth into pursuing entrepreneurship in their professional careers. Finding and nurturing fresher ideas through proper training and guidance will go on to reinforce and add value to Pakistan’s startup landscape.

The advancement in digital technology has helped a lot of promising digital startups to surface in the country which will go on to morph into small and medium businesses in the near future. Karandaaz Pakistan is committed to facilitating SMEs by promoting access to finance by employing technology-enabled digital solutions. We look forward to helping accelerate promising startups in order to enable them to contribute to the country’s economy.”

Samar Hassan the Head of Communications at Karandaaz took the stage to say,

“The cross-cutting themes at Karandaaz are innovation, youth, and women entrepreneurship. At Karandaaz we strongly believe that you guys (youth) are the future.”

He further added,

“You are the driving force of the nation. If you go places, we need to be behind you to support you, to uplift you, and I am sure you will go places regardless of whether we are there to support you or not. But we are here to reiterate that commitment to you.”

Samar Hasan, Head of Communications at Karandaaz Pakistan said,

“The cross-cutting themes at Karandaaz are innovation, youth, and women entrepreneurship. At Karandaaz we strongly believe that you guys (youth) are the future,” said Samar Hasan, Head of Communications at Karandaaz Pakistan. “You are the driving force of the nation. If you go places, we need to be behind you to support you, to uplift you, and I am sure you will go places regardless of whether we are there to support you or not. But we are here to reiterate that commitment to you.”

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LUMS is going to host Startup Weekend Lahore this month. The program aims to bring together startups, entrepreneurs and experts so they can interact with each other and learn more.

This event provides a platform for entrepreneurs to share their ideas with the attendees. Mentors and experts can provide support and solutions for the problems related to business and startups.

Since 2012, Startup Weekend Lahore has served as a platform for many successful startups. Beauty Hooked, Shah Sawari, MentMe, Groopic, Sabzi.pk are all the startups that have emerged from the event and have gained popularity and success.

Also last year event was great success. It was attended b 130 innovators and the theme for last year was ‘Ed-innovation’. This year even better event is expected as people are getting more and more attracted to entrepreneurship every day.

The three-day event aims courses like Pitch, Build Something Real and Launch. Form a team of talented people and get ready for one of the biggest events.

The teams will perform certain tasks and on the basis of tasks the teams will be judged.

The tasks include:

1. Model creation
2. Coding
3. Designing
4. Market validation

Finally, each team gives a presentation and states its case to the judges and entrepreneurial leaders and receives critical feedback. They will have to do this in just three days.

Friday night: 60-second pitches that result in the formation of small teams around the best, most viable business concepts.

Saturday and Sunday: Teams focus on user research, customer development, validating their ideas and building prototypes with the help of experienced coaches from the entrepreneurial world.

Sunday afternoon: Teams demonstrate their products and receive valuable feedback from a panel of expert judges.

Benefits if you attend the event:

1) A free .co domain name along with many other perks,

2) Coaching by industry leaders,

3) A network of 120 new developer, designer and entrepreneur friends,

4) Breakfast, lunch and dinner for the whole weekend

The other details are as follows:

Registration fee: Rs. 1500/-

Last date of submission: 14 February, 2017

Event Date: 24 February, 2017 to 26 February, 2017

Venue: Computer Department LUMS

Shortlisted candidates will be contacted with details of processing payment and unique IDs will be assigned to them. Hurry up! and register here.

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Good news for all startups and people looking forward to join startup business. Aplos Innovations are hosting Startup Weekend along with Seed Ventures. Both the companies are bringing to you one of the largest and important entrepreneurial event. It is to be held in Karachi on 25th of November to 27th of November.

It is a three day event with total of 54 working hours. The event aims to guide people to plan their business in just few days. This is going to be a great help for all startups and people who are interested in business. It is also going to be one best platform for young people to know about flourishing their business. It is for all entrepreneurs who want to expand their business.

This is the initial stage of the Global Startup Battle so the winning team will also qualify to present their idea in the finale of the Global Opening night. Than the event is scheduled to have a Theme Dinner. There would be a guiding and working session after which a social night will be arranged.

The closing ceremony followed by another Theme Dinner The best thing about the event is you don’t need to be a experienced person to attend this event anyone can join this event by registering and paying a small fee. Even if you don’t have a really great idea for business you can team up with other participants and show what you have.

Once you register yourself you can attend the event, socialize with people, demonstrate your skills and enjoy. You can ask for the help from the staff and they will guide you as per your needs and ideas. So everyone register yourself as soon as possible.

The Startup Weekend has finally come to Pakistan. In the City of Lights make your name shine and avail the chance.

For registration form and queries visit the Startup Weekend Karachi by following this link.

Register for the Event

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LUMS Center for Entrepreneurship (LCE) in collaboration with Ilm Ideas 2 and Techstars, organized a themed Startup Weekend event at LUMS to scout and support innovators looking to address the enrollment, retention and learning outcome challenges in the education sector of Pakistan.

The event started on Friday evening, August 5, with Dr. Zartash Afzal Uzmi, LUMS faculty member and facilitator for Startup Weekend Lahore, commencing the proceedings and opening remarks presented by Shahida Saleem, Team Lead Pakistan Education Innovation Fund (Ilm Ideas 2). From among the 130 participants of the Start Weekend, a total of 63 startups made their elevator pitches to the audience on Friday evening. 19 startups were shortlisted to continue with the competition and mentoring support for the rest of the weekend.

Participants worked tirelessly throughout the weekend including the nights with a passion that was palpable. Through Saturday until Sunday evening, successful business people and educators came in to mentor and coach the startups and help them polish their business models, financials and even presentations. The hard work of all the teams culminated on Sunday, August 7, where all the 19 shortlisted teams pitched in front of a panel of judges comprising of Khurram Zafar, Abid Malik, Faisal Bari, Izza Farrukh, Shahida Saleem, Imran Sarwar and Gauher Aftab.

Ilmistan, an online platform for teachers training won the competition. Keep Schools Safe, a startup focused on imparting disaster preparedness training to schools, came in second. According to the founders, there are hundreds of thousands of kids whose education suffer because of disruptions caused by natural disasters and people-caused incidents in Pakistan. Edu Care, a startup formed by students of Namal University that aims to build an online networking platform to connect students in any part of the country with volunteer tutors and coaches, came in third. The founders of Educare dedicated the win to the generous donors of Namal University that enabled them to seek good education and gave them the confidence to start their own ambitious venture. The Audience Favorite vote went out to SS Gamification, a team who is working on gamifying social sciences subjects in schools.

Addressing the participants of the Startup Weekend, Shahida Saleem of Ilm Ideas 2 said, “You all blew me away! Your energy, your passion and your commitment is infectious and I believe that a lot of social enterprises we saw develop over the weekend will play a pivotal role in providing 25 million out of school children access to good education.”

The winning team and the top two runners up are offered guaranteed incubation at LUMS Center for Entrepreneurship while all other participants were encouraged to apply for incubation for the 6^th batch of LCE through the online application process.

About Startup Weekend Lahore:

Startup Weekend Lahore is the Lahore chapter of the global Startup Weekend event held at LUMS every year. The event is backed by Google for Entrepreneurs, .CO and TechStars and is a 54-hour event that brings together enthusiastic and driven budding entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups leading to the path of launching successful ventures.

About LUMS Center for Entrepreneurship:

LUMS Center for Entrepreneurship (LCE) is Pakistan’s most comprehensive experiential development platform for budding entrepreneurs that formalizes the process of scouting, grooming and facilitating passionate startup founders. Gust and Fundacity recently rated LCE the #1 accelerator in Pakistan and #11 in Asia. Since its inception in May 2014, LCE has mentored over 130 entrepreneurs who have created over 400 direct jobs and provided better economic and livelihood opportunities for thousands more. LCE graduates have already generated PKR 200 Million in revenues and are valued at PKR 1.5 Billion backed by approximately PKR 150 Million in investment capital by local and foreign investors. More about LCE at: lce.lums.edu.pk and Facebook and Twitter

About Ilm Ideas 2:

Ilm Ideas 2, supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), provides a platform for the generation, piloting and scaling up of innovative solutions to address critical education challenges in Pakistan. Phase 2 of the program, launched in 2015, is managed by Cambridge Education, a member of the Mott MacDonald group. More about Ilm Ideas 2 at: ilmideas2.pk and Facebook and Twitter

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