Paklaunch takes its investor gathering to New York for the first time
The eighth UNConference, capped at 120 people and powered by Abhi, ran at the Yale Club on 19 and 20 October with 80 global investors and 40 founders.
Paklaunch, the diaspora community that connects Pakistani founders with investors abroad, held UNConference 26.2 at the Yale Club of New York on 19 and 20 October. It was the eighth edition of the series and the first in New York. Earlier editions took place in Palo Alto, Dubai, London, Riyadh and Islamabad.
Attendance was capped at 120: 80 global investors and 40 startup founders. Abhi, the salary advance and embedded credit company, was the title sponsor, with HAAF Group as strategic partner. Platinum sponsors included disrupt.com and Liberty City Ventures, and QistBazaar and Tab.ai were among the silver sponsors.
How the two days ran
A welcome dinner on 19 October ran from 6 pm to 10 pm. The main programme followed on 20 October, from 9 am to 5 pm at the club on Vanderbilt Avenue. Paklaunch describes the format as participants only, with no spectators: peer to peer breakout rooms, pitch clinics, investor speed networking, curated one to one meetings and closed door leadership sessions.
Topics included cross border capital flows, fintech and embedded finance, AI and enterprise transformation, and building global teams. The programme also highlighted a women entrepreneurs accelerator, Bazaar on ARY, the PALS leadership programme and Pakistan's semiconductor policy.
Who was on the list
Paklaunch named 38 speakers. Those identified with firms include Aatif Awan of Indus Valley Capital, Faisal Aftab of Zayn VC, Kalsoom Lakhani of i2i Ventures, Ali Afridi of Equal Ventures and Jerjees Seja, chief executive of ARY Networks. Danish Lakhani, founder and chief executive of NayaPay, and Muhammad Shamoon Tariq, founder and chief executive of Mahaana Wealth, were announced as attendees.
Early stage money is the scarce part of Pakistan's startup market. Startups raised $74.7 million in the third quarter, according to i2i Ventures, but one deal, Fasset's $68 million round, made up 91 percent of it. Outside that round the total was about $6.7 million, spread across the quarter's other four deals.
The community behind it
Aly Fahd founded Paklaunch in San Francisco on 29 April 2020, starting as a WhatsApp group of seven friends in the Bay Area. The organisation says it now has more than 500,000 community members, has held more than 550 events and has enabled more than $130 million in funding. It also lists more than 40 community partners and says it has raised more than $2 million for charities. Its stated goal is to make Pakistan a top ten technology ecosystem in the world by 2030.
