021Disrupt the international conference on entrepreneurship and innovation was held in Karachi on November 10th and 11th with the aim of connecting the world’s leading investors, innovators, and tech pioneers with Pakistan’s burgeoning startup community.
The 2-day conference, organized by P@SHA’s Tech Incubator - The Nest I/O, was attended by more than 30 institutional investors, 280 startups and over 50 speakers from home and abroad.
Jehan Ara, President P@SHA and Founder of The Nest I/O, was quoted saying, “021Disrupt has become the go-to event for the startup community of Pakistan while investors from around the world use it as the hunting ground for investment opportunities. We are so proud of the brand and global network that we have created around 021Disrupt and hope to continue to raise the bar in the coming years”.
This year GOBI Partners - an investment fund that focuses on early stage, IT and digital media companies, announced investment in ‘Sasta Ticket’ - a Pakistani startup showcasing at the prestigious event.
Lamsa, a children’s edutainment app with over 12 million downloads, announced that it will be launching an Urdu version of the app for Pakistani audiences. Another major announcement came from beverage giant Coca-Cola about ‘The Dasani Discovery Challenge', which invites entrepreneurs to counter the issues of plastic waste management using innovative solutions.
The first edition of 021Disrupt was held in November 2017. It attracted not only renowned speakers from around the world but also resulted in investments for local startups: ModulusTech, SmartChoice, and Dreamnode.
Some of the leading VC’s that participated in this year’s celebrated event included Lumia Capital, Middle East Venture Partners, Alter Global, Fatima Ventures, Valhalla Capital, Wamda Capital, GOBI VC, Lakson Investments Venture Capital and Sarmayacar, among countless others. The investors had a cumulative target fund size of more than 1 Billion USD.