Paklaunch’s UNConference 26 has concluded in Islamabad after two days of intensive engagement among Pakistan’s technology, investment, and entrepreneurship community, bringing together up to 120 selected founders, global investors, and industry leaders at Mövenpick Centaurus Mall from April 29 to April 30, 2026. The event was powered by aik digital, Pakistan’s first Islamic digital banking platform by BankIslami, with strategic partners including Fasset, JazzWorld, and HAAF Group. Attendance remained strictly by registration and invitation only, and throughout the gathering, industry leaders engaged in deep discussions regarding venture capital, fintech, artificial intelligence policy, and cross-border growth.
Unlike traditional corporate events, UNConference 26 utilized an open-space format with no predetermined speakers or panels. Instead, every attendee acted as both a participant and a potential session leader, with participants co-creating the agenda directly on the day of the event. This format, which places the responsibility for content generation on the community itself rather than a curated lineup of presenters, has become a defining feature of the Paklaunch approach and consistently produces conversations that are more candid and operationally relevant than standard conference programming.
Among the key discussions, Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority Chairman Bilal Bin Saqib highlighted the massive potential of Pakistan’s youth, noting that the national average age stands at just 23 years old, and suggested that the country must channel this human resource by using artificial intelligence to solve socio-economic problems in agriculture, medicine, and education, before exporting these frameworks globally. On Pakistan’s freelance economy, data shared at the event showed the sector posted a 50.9 percent growth rate with revenues reaching 856 million US dollars for the 2025-26 fiscal year, with the country now hosting 2.37 million freelancers, making it the fourth-largest freelancer market globally. Ali Dar, Advisor on Artificial Intelligence Punjab, noted that many young freelancers currently earn around 500 US dollars per month, but that upgrading their skill sets with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain could multiply these earnings twentyfold.
The opening day of UNConference 26 held special significance as April 29 marked the sixth anniversary of Paklaunch. Exactly six years ago in 2020, the organization began as a single WhatsApp group formed by seven friends. Today, Paklaunch operates as a leading community that links startup founders with mentors and connects investors with opportunities, with the latest event successfully advancing its ongoing mission to enable meaningful connections across Pakistan’s rapidly expanding startup ecosystem. The scale of the community’s growth from a seven-person chat group to a two-day invitation-only gathering at one of Islamabad’s premier venues is itself a measure of how far Pakistan’s startup ecosystem has travelled in half a decade.
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