The third cohort of Telenor’s famed startup accelerator program Velocity officially kicked off on Aug 21 at the company’s Islamabad headquarters with 12 shortlisted startups pitching their products to the panel of judges.
The event was attended by prominent personalities of the tech world including Khurram Zafar – founder 47 Ventures, Salman Wasay – founder Couch Potato, Owais Anjum – founder Cricut, Saad Kiani – Head of Telenor Velocity, and Durdana Achakzai – Chief Digital Officer at Telenor Pakistan.
Jeffery Paine, an international entrepreneur, and venture capitalist also attended the event as a judge. He is a General Partner at Golden Gate Ventures Singapore, and a director of The Founder Institute since 2010, a company that has successfully graduated 60 start-ups.
After an overwhelming response of applications for Cohort 3, 12 startups were shortlisted to pitch in front of a panel of judges to secure their spot in the top 6. After careful scrutiny, the judges finally selected the best 6 start-ups.
The final 6
The top 6 startups which qualified for Telenor Velocity’s third Cohort include the following. All these startups were selected on the basis of their unique business model, strong team base, and inventive working model.
- QanoonOnline (qanoononline.com )
An online lawyers market place providing online legal consultancy services, which are currently not available in Pakistan, to the general public; overseas Pakistanis; and the corporate sector. Qanoon online provides simplicity of finding the best lawyers in the country, according to their law practices and carefully designed Practice Management System for Lawyers, Law Firms, and Courts.
- pk (http://macan.pk/)
A real estate services platform being a one window solution through on call or website for all sectors domestic, corporate and industrial utilizing.
- Repairwala (http://repairwala.pk/)
Repairwala has an extremely simple start-up providing doorstep pickup, repair and delivery of electronic devices with a focus on mobile phones.
- Enovatrax (http://www.enovatrx.com/)
E-novatRx is Pakistan’s first integrated, digital (health + finance) platform that enables health consumers to access between 10% to 50% discounts on prescription medicines via a combination of retail discounts and instant manufacturer, e-rebates, processed at a nationwide network of healthcare venues (pharmacies, labs, diagnostic imaging centers, clinics and hospitals) using a mobile app-enabled smart card.
- SalesExpo (https://www.salesexpo.com.pk/)
SalesExpo is a unique platform where customers can explore all the available sales/deals available in the market; primarily related to ready-made wear. Currently, it is a web based application that publishes the deals/sales related information, by fetching data via web-scraping technique.
- Showeventz (http://www.showeventz.com/)
Pakistan’s first event management portal which is a one stop solution to the entire event related worries. Enabling people to enjoy their freedom.
The Way Forward
The third Cohort consisting of the 6 selected startups will begin from the first week of September and will become a part of the program for 4 months.
Through the Velocity accelerator platform, the startups will get:
- Access to office hours with mentors,
- Access to investors
- Co working space
- Access to customers
- Online Payment Solution
- Chance to pitch for seed funding of $10,000 to Telenor Pakistan
Irfan Wahab Khan, CEO, Telenor Pakistan, shared his thoughts on this occasion, “The world is rapidly moving into the digital space, Telenor has undertaken many ventures and now with Velocity, we intend to support startups which have the potential to strengthen the digital revolution in Pakistan.”
