KARACHI: The Shahjehan S Karim Incubation Centre (SSK-IC) at the Institute of Business Management, Karachi held the Dr Ahmer S Karim (ASK) Cohort-1 Graduation Ceremony on Wednesday.

The chief guest was Nadeem Hussain, Chairman, Pakistan Fintech Network and Executive Chairman, Planet N Group of Companies. Four startups were awarded graduation that were incubated at the SSK-IC, named in honour of IoBM’s Late Founder President. The ASK Grant Challenge provided business expertise and financial support to the startups. The graduating startups were: Asmeron, Boltay Huroof, Bridge Care, Creative 3D, Nutroforge products and TactonBiotic.

Nadeem Hussain said that entrepreneurship is about passion and not numbers. He advised aspiring entrepreneurs to bring a change to the customer journey, monetize their businesses, and should achieve scalability.

IoBM President Talib Karim appreciated the efforts of the mentors and startups who worked together to achieve a mutual goal. He said IoBM believes in creating job creators and the SSK-IC is working to make this happen. Mehboob S Karim, Chief Technical Advisor, IoBM, shared the strategy pillars of SSK-IC including infrastructure, capacity building and mentoring, financial viability, tech-enabled ESG innovations, industry and academia linkages, and post-incubation support.

During his welcome address, Dr Imran Batada, IoBM’s CTO and Director CIT said that startups need to take into consideration the timing of the launch, execution of the plan, idea, and business model.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021