Overview of i2i accelerator
The i2i Accelerator is a four-month program that runs every Fall in Pakistan. The selected entrepreneurs receive access to intensive business support to grow their businesses and convene for six in-person weekends in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore (and a fun retreat up in Murree).
The weekend sessions are led by the i2i team and various mentors on topics ranging from branding and customer acquisition to financials and operations. At the end of the program, entrepreneurs pitch before investors at our annual Demo Day and are connected to i2i’s rich investor network.


I2i Accelerator Alumni
Cosmic Perspective
Cosmic Perspective is an astronomy & STEM-based education company..

Cosmic Perspective
Cosmic Perspective is an astronomy & STEM-based education company, conducting workshops to strengthen math and science concepts

Washup
Washup is an on-demand platform for laundry services, guaranteeing door..

Washup
Washup is an on-demand platform for laundry services, guaranteeing door to door service within 72 hours

Edkasa
Edkasa meticulously recruit top-quality teaching talent and..

Edkasa
Edkasa meticulously recruit top-quality teaching talent and train them in best practices for online teaching.

Plate101
Plate101 is an on-demand platform for home chefs

Plate101
Plate101 is an on-demand platform for home chefs based in Islamabad/Rawalpindi currently employing 200 cooks.

EZ Makaan
EZ Makaan is an online platform for home renovation..

EZ Makaan
EZ Makaan is an online platform for home renovation, design & decor needs, digitizing the conventional way of home improvement.

The Madhatters
The Madhatters is a female-led travel company in..

The Madhatters
The Madhatters is a female-led travel company in Pakistan that aims to make adventure & travel accessible, safe & easy.

GharPar
GharPar is a marketplace that connects at-home beauty..

Gharpar
GharPar is a marketplace that connects at-home beauty service providers with clients through the use of a technology & are operating in Lahore and Islamabad.

Aurat Raaj
Aurat Raaj is a chatbot that uses human expertise..

Aurat Raaj
Aurat Raaj is a chatbot that uses human expertise and artificial intelligence to answer questions girls and women have about their health, hygiene and safety.

Science Fuse
Science Fuse is working to change how science is perceived..

Science Fuse
Science Fuse is working to change how science is perceived and communicated both inside and outside classrooms in Pakistan. They create informal STEM learning environments for children from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds to nurture their interest and understanding of STEM.

Roamer
Roamer is an on-demand car rental community where..

Roamer
Roamer is an on-demand car rental community where travelers can rent any car they want, whenever, wherever and for any duration, from a vibrant community of local car owners.

Her Ground
Her Ground Her Ground provides a subscription..

Her Ground
Her Ground provides a subscription-based online service that delivers feminine hygiene products directly to consumers.

Booked.pk
Booked.pk is Pakistan’s innovative venue..

Booked.pk
Booked.pk is Pakistan’s innovative venue booking portal where you can browse and compare hundreds of venues, explore their facilities, check their prices and availability and even book them only by making a few clicks.

Polly and Other Stories
Polly and Other Stories is..

Polly and Other Stories
Polly and Other Stories is Pakistan’s first online store for hand-made, unique products sourced directly from artisans and small businesses from across the region, which gives big voices to little ventures.

Queno
Queno is an educational platform that aims to..

Queno
Queno is an educational platform that aims to build an e-communication bond between schools and parents. Through the platform, parents can keep an eye on their children’s progress and watch for updates in real time on their mobile phones.

Easy Insurance
Easy Insurance is the pioneer of Insurtech in Pakistan, that..

Easy Insurance
Easy Insurance is the pioneer of Insures in Pakistan, that has simplified the insurance acquisition process for the masses. The first digitalized insurance aggregator website of the region, it envisions a risk-free Pakistan.

Orenda
Orenda is an ed-tech startup that aims to make education..

Orenda
Orenda is an ed-tech startup that aims to make education addictive and relevant for young children. Their award winning curriculum is taught through cartoons, reinforced through play-based learning, and tested by assessments.
Saaf Suthra Sheher
Saaf Suthra Sheher aims to innovate waste manageme..

Saaf Suthra Sheher
Saaf Suthra Sheher aims to innovate waste management and contribute to urban regeneration to make Pakistan’s cities sustainable.

Good Earth
Good Earth is a marketplace for healthy and organic produce..

Good Earth
Good Earth is a marketplace for healthy and organic produce grown by small scale farmers in Pakistan. Their model ensures the increase in their partner farmers’ income by at least 50%, while reversing an environmentally damaging status quo and repairing invaluable natural environments.

Organic Jiyo
Organic Jiyo is an exclusive online retailer for natural..

Organic Jiyo
Organic Jiyo is an exclusive online retailer for natural, organic & healthy products in Pakistan focused on bridging the gap between authentic organic producers & consumers.

Mauqa Online
Mauqa.Online uses technology to tackle..

Mauqa Online
Mauqa.Online uses technology to tackle illiteracy. Their first service is an ‘uber for labor’ service that lets illiterate workers find real time, temporary work nearby.

Secret Stash
Secret Stash is Pakistan’s premier online marketplace..

Secret Stash
Secret Stash is Pakistan’s premier online marketplace to buy and sell new and pre-loved designer items for a discount.

Paimona
Paimona is a furniture brand that bridges the..

Paimona
Paimona is a furniture brand that bridges the local craft industry and the global design industry, and closing the gap through education, innovation and deconstructive design.

Jaan Pakistan
Jaan Pakistan provides affordable energy solutions..

Jaan Pakistan
Jaan Pakistan provides affordable energy solutions to meet the domestic household energy needs of low-income communities.

Asaan Doctor
Aasan Doctor is an ‘Uber for healthcare’ service that..

Asaan Doctor
Aasan Doctor is an ‘Uber for healthcare’ service that connects certified doctors to patients from the ‘bottom of the pyramid’, over the phone, SMS or web.

Grit3D
Grit3D aims to play a pivotal role in health and education..

Grit3D
Grit3D aims to play a pivotal role in health and education standards and revolutionise industries with emerging 3D printing technologies.

Ammi Service
Ammi Service aims to provide the first voice-messaging..

Ammi Service
Ammi Service aims to provide the first voice-messaging service that educates expecting Pakistani women in rural areas.

Sehat Kahani
Sehat Kahani is a novel healthcare marketplace..

Sehat Kahani
Sehat Kahani is a novel healthcare marketplace that connects female doctors to millions of underserved patients in real-time while leveraging online technology.

Emperor's Bazaar
Emperor’s Bazaar is Pakistan’s first Crafts..

Emperor's Bazaar
Emperor's Bazaar Emperor’s Bazaar is Pakistan’s first Crafts based e-commerce marketplace curating Authentic Handcrafted Goods from all over Pakistan.

Dot & Line
Dot & Line is an after school academic enrichment company..

Dot & Line
Dot & Line is an after school academic enrichment company that shifts the focus away from rote learning and the tuition culture in Pakistan whilst providing a safety net for those who fall within the cracks of the traditional schooling system.

EZPZ Sehat
Ezpz Sehat is an online system that aims to bridge the gap between..

EZPZ Sehat
Ezpz Sehat is an online system that aims to bridge the gap between doctors and patients by providing reliable information of doctors practising all over Pakistan.

Smart Security Solutions
Smart Security Solutions is an internet of things (IOT)..

Smart Security Solutions
Smart Security Solutions Smart Security Solutions is an internet of things (IOT) company that creates firmware, hardware, and software products designed to maximize car security and safety.

Meri Taleem
Meri Taleem is the one-stop shop for higher educati..

Meri Taleem
Meri Taleem is the one-stop shop for higher education, providing students opportunities, counselling, and information to make the transition to university life easier and more convenient.

Dheere Bolo
Dheere Bholo aims to be an activist publishing..

Dheere Bolo
Dheere Bholo aims to be an activist publishing house that provides high-quality and innovative content to improve Pakistani education.

Savaree
Savaree aims to encourage carpooling in areas where..

Savaree
Savaree aims to encourage carpooling in areas where people are unable to travel as freely.

Blue Saint
Blue Saint aims to preserve, modernize and showcase..

Blue Saint
Blue Saint aims to preserve, modernize and showcase Pakistan’s cultural crafts to an international audience via an e-shop and focus on our female artisans.

Inaaya
Inaaya is a high-fashion company that works..

Inaaya
Inaaya is a high-fashion company that works with rural women in Sindh to produce high-quality clothing and jewelry.

Amal Academy
Amal Academy works to develop professional..

Amal Academy
Amal Academy works to develop professional and life skills amongst the youth in Pakistan, in order to empower underprivileged students to realize their professional dreams. Amal Academy aims to train students in low-income schools, reaching 100,000 disadvantaged students within 9 years.

Procheck
Procheck is an SMS-based pharmaceutical product..

Procheck
Procheck is an SMS-based pharmaceutical product verification service for consumers, using unique serial numbers printed on the product. The company aims to combat the counterfeit pharmaceutical industry in Pakistan.

Idea Centricity
IdeaCentricity launched Oddjobber, a platform to match..

Idea Centricity
IdeaCentricity launched Oddjobber, a platform to match low income, low-skilled workers to jobs. Using phone calls and SMS, Oddjobber helps job seekers reach the mainstream market. It is currently working with rickshaw drivers in Lahore, matching drivers with those seeking rides via mobile technology. Think “Uber for Rickshaws”.

Raise D'Bar
NutriNysa launched Raise D’Bar, Pakistan’s first locally-sourced..

Raise D'Bar
NutriNysa launched Raise D’Bar, Pakistan’s first locally-sourced all-natural organic nutrition bars. Ingredients for Raise D’Bars are sourced from low-income farmers in Pakistan’s northern areas (Gilgit-Baltisan).

The Reading Room Project
The Reading Room Project (RRP) curates educati..

The Reading Room Project
The Reading Room Project (RRP) curates education technology content to supplement education in low-income classrooms in Pakistan. RRP is recently completed their pilot with primary and secondary school students in a slum in Karachi, Pakistan, curating content and facilitating learning in an innovative environment

OPEN
The Organic Pine Nut Enterprise, or OPEN, is a for-profit enterprise that..

OPEN
The Organic Pine Nut Enterprise, or OPEN, is a for-profit enterprise that invests and innovates Pakistan’s underdeveloped pine nut value chain to increase the income & capacity of small farmers. Through a cooperative model, OPEN aims to increase and improve production, processing, arrange organic certification and supply this commodity to high-end local and international markets.

EcoEnergy
EcoEnergy goes to the doorsteps of off-grid business..

EcoEnergy
EcoEnergy goes to the doorsteps of off-grid businesses and households to sell and service high-quality solar solutions. Backed by pay-as-you-go technology, we make electricity affordable to our customers by breaking it down into monthly instalments and letting them pay for only what they use.

Milk'Op
Milk’Op is a for-profit social enterprise that organizes..

Milk'Op
Milk’Op is a for-profit social enterprise that organizes, finances, and supports small dairy farmers in Pakistan. Milk’Op aims to both provide income generation opportunities for these small farmers and create a fully integrated modern dairy value chain in the country.

Popinjay
Popinjay is sustainable fashion company that supports..

Popinjay
Popinjay is sustainable fashion company that supports marginalized women to produce high-quality handbags. The company’s mission is to produce beautiful high-end products while producing fair-wage jobs for low-income women in Pakistan.

Renewable Energy Solutions
Renewable Energy Solutions, or RES, provides renewable..

Renewable Energy Solutions
Renewable Energy Solutions, or RES, provides renewable energy solutions to rural farmers in Punjab, Pakistan. RES primarily builds biogas plants to support small dairy farmers, helping to power their agricultural, dairy and livestock needs, and later moving to provide other forms of biomass for power generation.

What you get as part of the i2i Accelerator
Intensive Business
Support
The i2i curriculum is proven to get results (on average, our companies experience 200% revenue growth with our program) and is designed to help your business gain traction & become more investment ready.
An opportunity to get investment from the i2i Investment Fund
I2I has just recently launched our first VC fund- i2i Ventures, providing seed funding to innovative startups. Although i2i Ventures is not just limited to investing in the i2i accelerator, it has proven to be our main and strongest pipeline.
Access to a
Virtual CFO
A dedicated resource will provide advice on accounting processes and create financial dashboards to help your business
Access to a Research Fellow
Each startup will receive research support from i2i’s in-house Insights department. The fellow will work with the startup to identify and fill in the gaps in information and market research.
5 Minutes Marketing Video
All i2i startups get a professionally made marketing video which they can use for promotion and visibility! You can see our companies’ past videos here.
Relevant Mentorship
During the time of the accelerator, the startups will be introduced and matched with several mentors across the country to connect with and establish an exchange plan.
Access to the i2i Investor Network
With a large community of investors, i2i designs sessions and the Demo Day to begin conversations and develop connections between startups and potential investors. Currently, i2i’s community includes the most active Angel Investors and Venture Capital Funds in the country.
Amazon Web Services
Through i2i’s partnership with Amazon Web Services, i2i alumni get access to $15,000 in AWS Promotional Credit valid for 2 years, 1 year of AWS Business Support (up to $5,000), Access to the AWS Technical and Business Essentials web-based (or instructor-led) training ($600 value per course), and 80 credits for Self-Paced Labs ($80 value)
Access to the local startup community in 3 different cities
We take our startups to Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad to help build new networks and partnerships, and access the local ecosystems in these cities.
Access to 50+ experts and mentors over the course of the program
Our mentors are some of Pakistan’s top entrepreneurs and industry experts who dedicate their time and experience to our startups during the accelerator. These mentors will be actively involved in the journey of each startup, providing effective feedback and ongoing support
Basic Eligibility
1.
Founders must be full-time (or prepared to be full-time) on their venture in Pakistan.
2.
Businesses must create a positive social or environmental impact, with a direct or indirect impact on health, nutrition and/or accountability.
3.
Businesses must be for-profit business models or have plans to become for-profit. Ideally, businesses should already be registered entities.
4.
Founders must show some traction (i.e., revenue or proof of concept) on the ground with their product or service.
5.
Founders must be financially viable or have outlined plans to become viable in the next 3-5 years.
6.
Businesses must be seed-stage, seeking more than $100K – $200K in investment (it is not mandatory for businesses to be seeking investment).
Accelerator FAQS
Invest2Innovate defines an impact startup as a for-profit business that provides an innovative product or service to address a long-standing social or environmental issue. While impact startup’s primary intention for launching their business is impact-driven, they must also have plans to be financially viable.
We are looking for passionate, young, and determined entrepreneurs trying to build innovative & scalable businesses. Businesses must be based or have operations in Pakistan. We choose seed-stage models – looking for key business support as well as between USD$100K – $200K in investment – that are innovative, have a large potential market, and have a significant and measurable social and/or environmental impact. i2i will give preference to for-profit companies already generating revenue on the ground, but we will still consider other businesses. We’re not looking for entrepreneurs who will be grant or donation dependent for the future.
In the past, i2i has been “sector agnostic,” i.e., we’ve selected companies from an array of sectors. While we have been sector specific in the past, this year we are sector agnostic again – as long as your company is a for-profit company that creates a positive impact, we want you to apply!”
Over the course of four months, selected entrepreneurs receive access to intensive business support to grow their businesses, and convene for six in-person weekends in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore (and a fun retreat up in Murree!), with targeted sessions led by the i2i team and mentors on topics ranging from branding to customer acquisition to financials and operations. At the end of the program, entrepreneurs pitch before investors at our annual Demo Day and are connected to other angel investors.
i2i really prides ourselves on our ability to deliver value to our companies – in the past three cycles, 100% of our founders stated they would recommend the program to future entrepreneurs. Our startups have gone on to raise $6.1M in funding (of which 90% was raised by our female-founded or co-founded companies!), created over 1500 jobs in Pakistan, and have experienced on average 200% revenue growth thanks to our program. More than that, our past entrepreneurs are our best ambassadors and continue to remain involved in future classes of the i2i Accelerator as mentors, judges, and friends.
i2i holds a strong investor community, made up of various VC Funds and angel investors, passionate about supporting startups in Pakistan. Many of our investors are also part of our mentor network, as well as judges in our application process. At the end of the i2i Accelerator, the startups are presented to these investors during the Demo Day.
i2i has also just recently launched our first VC fund- i2i Ventures, providing seed funding to innovative startups. Although i2i Ventures is not just limited to investing in the i2i accelerator, it has proven to be our main and strongest pipeline.
We have a rigorous application process that each entrepreneur must go through before selection, ensuring that prior to joining the i2i community, each startup meets i2i’s basic eligibility and has the potential to make groundbreaking change.
Each application is then put through a 3-tier selection process involving i2i’s management, mentors and expert community. Our selection rate is about 3%. We are hoping to announce the finalists by early October 2019. The accelerator will run from October 2019 – February 2020.
Yes, being part of i2i’s accelerator program does not require you to pay any costs, fees or equity. However, we do require founders selected for the program to be fully committed to the program and be available for all the sessions and after-session work. Each startup is sponsored by an external partner to be part of the accelerator.
i2i has licensed our curriculum to power and support programs in other geographies, as well as in Pakistan. We partnered with SD Asia for the Grameenphone Accelerator in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which launched in February 2016, and have worked with programs in Iraq and Ukraine. We licensed our curriculum and supported the first year of the National Incubation Centre in Islamabad, managed by Team Up and Jazz. We are also a program partner for DFAT’s Frontier Incubators program, through which i2i is providing hands on support to various incubators in the South Asia region including Takhleeq Incubator at the University of Central Punjab in Lahore, Accountability Lab Pakistan, Toru and LC Impact in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Nepal Communitere in Nepal, Impact Hub Phnom Penh in Cambodia, and KISS Startup in Vietnam. We plan to expand our work in these frontier markets even more in the coming year.