Pakistan wants young entrepreneurs. Does it actually want them to succeed?

Last month, over our usual chai-samosa session, my friend Rabia told me she wants to quit her job and start a perfume business. She had it all planned out. The scents, the packaging, even the name. I did not give her a pep talk (she rarely needs one). I asked her one question though, “Who carries you for the first six months?” And, she went quiet… That silence is the real pitch meeting and no incubator puts it on the agenda. The problem is not a shortage of business ideas. It is the unequal cost of trying to turn one into living.

When I started Puchick, I wanted to build a freelance marketplace and a one-stop shop for marketing. Finding customers was not the hard part. The boring stuff was. The bank got nervous about the business name. SECP could not decide which box a freelance marketplace belonged in. Then came the payment gateways. Each one was a small locked door and nobody was in a hurry to open it until they understood what we were.

Credit where it is due. You can now reserve a name and incorporate online through SECP’s eServices, and I wish I had had that. But a certificate is not a business. It would not give you working capital. It would not tell you what to do when the bank asks what you can put up against the loan.

Paper progress

On paper, small businesses are getting more credit than before. Data from the State Bank of Pakistan puts outstanding financing to small and medium enterprises at 906.71 billion rupees in June 2026. That is 7.76% of private-sector credit, up from 6.65% a year earlier. And yes, that is progress but I keep wondering who is actually inside that number. At the Pakistan Banking Summit in July 2026, bankers made one thing clear. If you want bank financing, your business has to be registered and paying taxes. Fair enough, but think about a 24-year-old with no credit history, no land and no uncle at the bank. Same bank, same rules but a very different welcome.

There are schemes on paper too. The State Bank’s Small and Medium Enterprise Asaan Finance Scheme, or SAAF, offers loans of up to 10 million rupees against personal guarantees, with government risk cover. Sounds great, right? What I really want to know is how many first-time founders ever hear about it and how many of them actually get a yes. Venture money tells a similar story. Data Darbar counted 36.6 million dollars in disclosed equity funding in 2025, up from 22.5 million the year before. Not quite a comeback, though. That came from 14 deals, against 347 million dollars in 2021. The money is going to fewer, bigger bets. Investors love their “show me the money” moment but before anyone can show the money, they have to be let into the room. That part rarely makes it into the funding reports.

Incubators, with love

I have worked around incubation centres, so I say this kindly. They help! You get a desk, mentors, a demo day with decent lighting. Ignite says its centres have incubated over 1,480 startups, with 23 billion rupees in committed investment, 16 billion rupees in revenue and 188,000 jobs. In 2023, the line was 1,200 startups and 21 billion rupees. Those are programme-reported figures. I have not come across an independent study that follows cohorts for years after graduation. So here is my question; who is still alive two years later? Who is earning? That is the number I would put on a billboard. Welcoming startups is the easy part. Following them home and seeing who made it is the real deal.

The cushion problem

Talent gets founders started. Cushion keeps them going. A founder with family money can sit through a late payment but and a founder without it cannot. Same idea, same grit but different cushion. And for many households the cushion keeps shrinking. National poverty rose from 21.9 percent in 2018-19 to 28.9 percent in 2024-25. Youth unemployment for ages 15 to 24 sits at 12.9 percent, against 7.1 percent overall. If your family is already stretched, quitting a salary for a “maybe” is a bet you cannot afford to lose. Now add the wider climate. In the World Bank’s 2022 survey, 32 percent of Pakistani firms called corruption a major constraint. Finance does not help much if the ground keeps moving.

What would have helped Rabia (and me)

I would start with money that fits the business. Small working capital, early funding and guarantees that do not depend on owning property. Then markets. Let small firms win a first contract through transparent procurement, pay them on time and write clearer rules for newer digital models like mine. I spent weeks explaining Puchick to people who had no box for it.

Last, make incubators publish what happens next. Survival, revenue, jobs and follow-on investment, every cohort, in public. Ignite’s own RFP for NIC Sialkot lists survival rates two years after graduation as a performance indicator. So, the metric exists. Show it. None of this means every startup deserves to win. Plenty should fail. Weak idea, small market, bad maths. That is the game. I only want failure to come from an unfit business, not from who your family is.

When Rabia finally answered my question, she named a cousin who “might” lend her something. That was her entire runway. To me, it is still a better pitch than most decks I have seen because at least it was honest. Her perfume is good. Her problem is that nobody has built her a way to afford the first six months. Pakistan is very good at celebrating the founders who launch. I would like to see it get just as good at keeping them alive. Ask yourself who carries the next Rabia for six months.

About the Author:

Muhammad Abubakar is Program and Communications Manager at Accountability Lab Pakistan and can be reached at mabubakar@accountabilitylab.org