Plan9 is Pakistan’s first nationwide tech incubator. An aid to those Pakistanis who want to become aspiring entrepreneurs one day. They accept teams who are well integrated and are working on a tech based product. Young, fresh and inventive entrepreneurs fall back in developing the right connections, gaining expert attention and covering seed investment. Their incubation is one of a kind, a tailor-designed process !!
Incubators are a great place for young entrepreneurs to groom themselves for becoming ready for industry, and I think even if you are a year or two down the road and need some assistance you should join an incubation program.
It all started from a Session of Mr. Jawad Farid at Plan 9 which was about Pitching to Customers and Investors - A Crash Course, I wanted to attend this session because I had a product XGear which is still a work in progress, handling the technology aspect was not a very big challenge for our team but developing the business side and knowing how to pitch the product to investors was a challenge. I contacted Ms. Hafsa Shorish (Marketing and PR Manager Plan9) to ask if I could attend the session, she told me as per policy the session was only for incubates but I should send in my project description anyway, I took my chances and emailed a brief introduction of what the product was all about and to my surprise the generous team of Plan9 arranged a meeting out of Plan9 for me to benefit from Mr. Jawad Farid's knowledge.
We decided to meet at Avari Hotel over breakfast at 7:30 in the morning where I discussed the product in detail with Mr. Jawad and Mr. Nabeel (Program Manager Plan 9) and they gave me some really substantial insights on how I should prepare an elevated pitch, how to do customer segmentation, and how to make business and financial models for my product and by the end our meeting I had a chance to demo my software after which I was offered to pitch the idea in front of the Plan 9 board to further refine the idea.
After that session I really regretted the day I choose not to apply for Plan9, as if a one hour session could help me achieve this much I would have done wonders if I had an opportunity to attend the complete 3 days workshop on Pitching, and this was only one session out of the numerous given by the experts of industry. I believe that Plan9 is one of the best initiatives that Punjab Government has taken lately.
Keep up the good work !!
If you are wondering what my product was all about, here is a glimpse of XGear, it basically enable users to login to their cars from anywhere in the world using smartphones and computers to locate, monitor, control even diagnose their cars by communicating realtime with their vehicles.
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