UNIDO Business Clinic supports Pakistani SMEs

An intensive business clinic was held on Friday in Lahore by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) for providing training to SMEs and start-up businesses that have been declared as semi-finalists under Global Cleantech Innovation Program (GCIP) Call for Awards 2017.

Adopting Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement are the world’s commitment to safeguard the global commons. UNIDO with its unique mandate to support inclusive and sustainable industrial development has partnered with the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to address the most pressing global environmental challenges of our time.

Through fostering innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems, UNIDO and GEF seek to promote affordable and scalable solutions enabling our partner countries to leapfrog to cleaner, more resilient economies.  GCIP currently running in 12 countries, including Pakistan, focuses on fostering emerging and commercially viable clean technology startups to fuel green industrial growth in the country, while small and medium-sized enterprises are provided with training, mentoring, and access to potential investors. 

The session started with the review of the commercialization potential of individual innovations. The first clinic was delivered by a prominent intellectual property lawyer Mr. Saad Nasrullah, who elaborated the importance of patent as well as procedure of filing patent both local and international.  After the session, the GCIP winners of last three years i.e. 2014, 2015 and 2016 joined and encouraged the teams to take their cleantech ideas to new heights as GCIP is the best platform for the Cleantech entrepreneurs to commercialize their innovations. They also inspired the participants by narrating their entrepreneurial journey and how GCIP supported them in becoming a successful entrepreneur.  The last clinic of the first day was chaired by renowned sustainability consultant Ms. Ambreen Waheed, who stressed the need for sustainability especially in terms of environmental and related facets; her analysis of business ideas in terms of sustainability was an eye opener for the entrepreneurs and they gathered many take home messages to comply and tailor their ideas according to different local and international environmental standards.

The second day continued with the remodeling of business clinic with the expertise of Mr. Farhan Riaz, a business expert from UET Lahore along with another ‘ Guru of Entrepreneurship’  Mr. Faisal Jalil Sherjan from LUMS. Both experts gave valuable guidance to participants and stressed on improving their business plan for making it further mature according to the requirements of investors.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Shahina Waheed, National Programme Coordinator, Global Cleantech Innovation Programme said, I am convinced that this intensive exercise has been helpful in improving the quality of your business models, which is imperative not only for this competition but to equip all of you with much needed knowledge, skills and information for boosting your entrepreneurship venture along with developing productive linkages with technical experts.