Pakistan Business Council and Pakistan Initiative Launch Startup Pitch Prize at Pakistan Conference at Harvard 2026

The Pakistan Business Council (PBC) and the Pakistan Initiative (TPI) have announced their first Startup Pitch Competition to spotlight high-potential Pakistani and Pakistan- focused ventures at one of the most prominent Pakistan convenings in North America.
This platform aims to provide high visibility to surface investable ideas and to bridge the gap between the next growth champions and potential investors, senior business leaders and stakeholders. Directly sitting under the Conference’s theme “From Potential to Performance”, this will focus on how talent and ideas are converted into measurable outcomes within the Pakistani economy.
The Startup Pitch Competition will follow a rigorous selection process, where only shortlisted cohort of founders will pitch live at the Conference. These pitches will be assessed by a jury including business leaders, venture capital representatives and investors. The organizers aim to focus on the ambitions, and the practical outcome of the ideas, thereby giving preferences to ventures that demonstrate a clear problem, a practical solution to it and their pathways to scale.
Why it matters now?
Pakistan is a young nation with about 67 percent of its population being less than 30 years old and recent estimates reveal that to absorb the growing workforce into the market and to be less susceptible to economic shocks, Pakistan needs to have 25-30 million jobs by 2030.
Against this backdrop, the PBC-TPI Startup Pitch Prize is structured as a practical intervention which brings together founders and scale-ups with viable Pakistan-centered models. This prize is a signal that the Pakistani private sector is ready to support commercially plausible and nationally pertinent innovation.
“At a time when competitiveness and productivity matter more than ever, Pakistan’s next phase of growth will depend on how effectively we convert ideas into scalable, competitive enterprises. At PBC, we strongly believe in business as a driver of growth, job creation and long-term economic resilience. This partnership reflects a clear intent from the private sector to back innovation that is commercially viable and globally relevant. Platforms such as the Pakistan Conference at Harvard provide an important bridge, connecting Pakistani talent and enterprise with international capital, networks and credibility. It is through such interventions that we can begin to shift the narrative from potential to performance,” said Dr Zeelaf Munir, Chairperson, Pakistan Business Council.
Commenting on the PBC-TPI Startup Pitch Prize, Ziad Bashir, Vice Chairman, Pakistan Business Council, said, “The PBC-TPI partnership reflects the willingness of Pakistani enterprises in backing startups that can scale responsibly and competitively. Pakistan needs such startups for growth and to raise productivity and this platform brings them into one of the world’s most influential academic ecosystems.”
Sannan Pervaiz and Muhammad Hadi, Co-Founders of the Pakistan Initiative, said the Pitch Competition is a way to convert ambitions into implementations. “The first-ever innovation forum and the Startup Pitch Prize, in collaboration with PBC, brings a new dimension to the agenda: it bridges the scale gap and promotes productivity and investment in the Pakistani ecosystem,” they said.
Hashaam Javed, MBA student at the Harvard Business School and the Chair Lead for the Pakistan Conference at Harvard 2026 reflected on the Startup Pitch Competition as a direct extension of creating tangible impact beyond conversations, commenting on the importance of enabling “a credible platform for Pakistani-origin founders to showcase what they are building on a global stage.”, and emphasizing the objective to “highlight performance, not just potential, and to demonstrate that globally competitive companies are being built by Pakistani founders across the world.”
“This initiative reflects our belief in business as a catalyst for innovation, investment and job creation. The Startup Pitch Competition is designed as a practical platform to connect founders with investors, business leaders and global networks. By focusing on ventures that demonstrate both ambition and execution, we aim to support ideas that can scale, create jobs and contribute meaningfully to Pakistan’s productivity and competitiveness,” noted Javed Kureishi, CEO, Pakistan Business Council.
Moreover, this partnership is embedded in the broader national agenda of human capital development and is a way to push for shifting Pakistan’s global narrative from crisis framing to capability. This will showcase solutions, enterprise and execution at a prominent international convening coming from Pakistani youth.
The Pakistan Conference at Harvard 2026
The Pakistan Conference at Harvard 2026, to be held on 12th April, is expected to be one of the largest Pakistan-focused convenings in North America. This conference will feature participation from across government, business, academia, media and the Pakistani diaspora. Building on last year’s inaugural conference, the 2026 conference is being centered around core national questions including Pakistan’s global narrative, governance, institutional trust, productivity and investment and innovation.
PBC-TPI collaboration at the conference will point to a broader move to position Pakistan’s innovation economy on a credible, and investible global platform. The organizers said that the Pitch Competition is intended as a foundation for future collaborations which are aligned with Pakistan’s competitiveness agenda.