StartUpCup 2015 concluded in Islamabad under the umbrella of US Embassy and The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Islamabad Chapter. The nationwide business contest attracted diverse startups from major cities. After a cut throat competition at the national pitch session, Patari becomes the champion while Wifigen and MARO Tandoors bagged runner up awards.
Mr. David Hale, Ambassador of United States of America to Pakistan and State Minister for CAAD, Dr. Tariq Fazal Chaudhry presented PKR 1,000,000 to Patari, PKR 750,000 to Wifigen and PKR 500,000 to MARO Tandoors.
With StartUp Cup 2015, new partnerships were fostered among various entrepreneurship spaces across Pakistan. LUMS Center of Entrepreneurship, Plan9, The Nest I/O and world’s first Women’s Entrepreneurial Center of Resources, Education, Access and Training for Economic Empowerment (WECREATE) actively participated in the contest. This year’s edition received more than 450 entries from all over Pakistan. After various rounds of pitching and coaching at city level qualifying rounds, the top 12 startups battled for the final pitch.
Patari – Winner
Patari has built a music streaming platform for Pakistani music industry which is available on desktops, tablets and phones. They have provided artists with a promotional platform through which they can reach out to their fans and monetize their music. After inking deals with over 80 Pakistani music labels, they currently have the biggest content library of Pakistani music ever assembled in one place. All this content is organized, tagged and made accessible through a breathtakingly simple interface.
On top of it all, they have music journalists and musicians who have curated around 40 playlists spanning across genres, decades and moods that enable a rare window into the Pakistani music and enables discovery that was hitherto impossible. Over 60% of local users login to Patari every day. Users’ average time on site is 22 minutes (as a frame of reference for most sites this time is in seconds).
After building up sufficient traction, Patari aims to roll out monetization strategy. Artists get a 30% cut from Patari revenue. While Patari promotes their music and help them reach their audience. They also plan to make money through Audio Ads; users will get to hear an ad after every 4-5 songs. Patari also offers Premium Subscriptions, so users pay a small amount of money to hear music in higher quality, be able to download it and listen to it ad free. Finally they plan to have sponsored playlists.
Wifigen – 1st Runner Up
Wifigen was recently valued at USD 1 million. It is a cloud based WiFi hotspot system which enables you to create a custom login interface for business/shop visitors, so when they login to your WiFi instead of a password box they get a page branded with the respective logo and login options like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or custom forms. Once user logs in using any of defined options they can be requested for a check-in, Facebook like or Twitter follow. They also provide each business, a cloud based dashboard where they can see demographics of people visiting them and further interact with them through emails.
MARO Tandoors – 2nd Runner Up
MARO Tandoors is a food startup which aims to open a chain of tandoors all over Lahore, and eventually all over Pakistan, providing its customers with clean, hygienic and high quality tandoori products, at reasonable prices, which includes products like Nutella Naan and Pizza Naan.
MARO Tandoors is currently the only company which offers branded tandoor products. The excellent customer service, hygiene and superior quality are factors that have not been offered in tandoors before. Furthermore, energy efficient tandoors and standardized products also add to their value, thus providing a remarkably elegant solution to the problem of low-standard tandoors in Pakistan.
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