Allied Bank, one of the largest commercial banks in Pakistan have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with National Incubator Center (NIC) which is the largest technology incubation center in Pakistan and managed by Teamup on the 18th of February 2021. Both organizations aim to promote innovation and digitization in the ecosystem.
Allied Bank will use this partnership to encourage incremental, radical and disruptive innovation by holding design thinking and mentoring sessions, conducting hackathons, and even partnering or funding relevant start-ups for mutual value sharing. Moreover, Allied Bank will also expose their relevant digital offerings such as Open-Banking APIs to the start-ups, allowing them to test it in a sandbox environment and possibly support their business architecture.
Teamup believes that the NIC startups can benefit immensely from this partnership. Relevant fintech startups will be provided access to ABL offerings and various collaborative programs will be developed to mentor, coach and facilitate startups to develop and refine their business ideas.
“We are extremely happy to initiate this collaboration and future prospects from this partnership are bright. Initiatives like these can be a game-changer for the Pakistan entrepreneurial ecosystem, and we are keen to explore new avenues for collaboration between the two parties. ”– Zouhair Khaliq, co-founder, Teamup (managing NIC)
Allied Bank aims to develop a more connected start-up ecosystem while emphasizing on scientific research promotion and entrepreneurial climate improvement through transferring know-how and knowledge sharing.
“The signing of MoU is a great milestone for both organizations and I strongly believe it will accelerate the growth of Fintech start-ups in the country. We look forward to sharing our knowledge and expertise with young innovators and hope our offerings will provide them a platform to grow and scale their company. ”–Sohail Aziz, Chief Digital Offer ABL
The management of ABL and Teamup are keen to take this collaboration forward and look forward to regular interaction to keep the momentum and identify new prospects for collaboration to take the entrepreneurial ecosystem forward.
About National Incubator Center
The National Incubation Center is Pakistan’s largest technology incubation center; the first purpose built creative space in Pakistan buzzing with innovators, mentors, change-makers and passionate leaders. It’s a living example of a successful public-private partnership between the Ministry of IT & Telecom, Ignite – National Technology Fund, Jazz and Teamup. NIC has incubated 209 startups over 9 cohorts with 21% of them having women entrepreneurs.
To learn more about NIC, visit: https://www.nicpakistan.pk/