Only 1% of Pakistani women run their own business. WISE Lab is Ignite’s bet on changing that number.
For years, the numbers around women and entrepreneurship in Pakistan have told a blunt story: only about a quarter of women are active in the labor force, and just 1% engage in entrepreneurship, compared to 21% of men. Ignite, National Technology Fund, the same body behind Pakistan’s National Incubation Centers, is now putting a dedicated bet against that gap. It’s called WISE Lab, short for Women Innovation & Startup Empowerment Lab, and its tagline says everything you need to know about the ambition: “Her idea. Her enterprise.”
For Munnezeh, Project Director of WISE Lab, this program was born from watching too many talented women hit the same wall a strong idea met with no capital, no network, no one willing to take the first bet. As she puts it: “Legacy is not measured by what you achieve but by what you empower others to become.”
What WISE Lab actually is
WISE Lab — Women Innovation and Startup Empowerment Lab, isn’t a one-off event or a grant cheque handed out once a year. It’s built as standing infrastructure a physical incubation space in Islamabad, spanning roughly 8,000 to 10,000 square feet, designed to host at least 20 startups at a time. The idea is to give women founders what most of them have historically had to fight for on their own: a desk, a room full of people building alongside them, and a direct line to the mentors and investors who can actually move a business forward.
But Islamabad is just the anchor. Ignite has structured WISE Lab to travel training bootcamps are planned across every province, plus Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu & Kashmir, aiming to reach up to 200 female micro-entrepreneurs a year who may never set foot in the capital.
What’s on offer
Strip away the policy language and WISE Lab breaks down into three concrete tracks:
- Incubation — space, structure, and a cohort model for startups based in Islamabad
- Training — business development, digital literacy, and investment-readiness bootcamps delivered nationwide
- Capital — up to five high-performing startups a year qualify for grants of up to Rs. 2 million to scale operations
That last point matters. Pakistan’s startup ecosystem has no shortage of training programs and pitch competitions; what’s scarcer is a program that pairs skill-building with an actual path to funding, tied to measurable outcomes Ignite is expected to monitor over time.
Where things stand right now
WISE Lab is run by a three-partner consortium, each bringing a different piece of the puzzle. Jazz, Pakistan’s largest digital connectivity player, leads the consortium and lends its nationwide reach and enterprise-tech muscle. Mobilink Bank, the country’s leading digital microfinance bank, comes in as co-lead, plugging women founders and MSMEs into digital banking and financial inclusion, arguably the piece that’s been missing from most incubation efforts to date. And on the ground, running the actual programme design and day-to-day implementation, is Change Mechanics, the innovation and ecosystem-development team also behind NIC Islamabad, NIC Faisalabad and WECON Movement. The WISE Lab website is live at wiselab.org.pk, currently a placeholder for what’s coming a signal that the program is moving from procurement into build-out. For founders and ecosystem watchers, that makes now the moment to pay attention rather than wait for a splashy launch event.
Why it’s worth watching
Pakistan already runs women-focused entrepreneurship efforts provincial AI labs, NGO-led bootcamps, university incubators. What sets WISE Lab apart is scale and mandate: it’s a national, government-backed platform, explicitly framed against Pakistan’s UN SDG commitments on gender equality, with a funded operator model rather than a volunteer-run initiative.
If it delivers on the brief, WISE Lab could become the missing middle layer between the countless women who have an idea and the small number who currently make it to a term sheet. Startupdotpk will be tracking who wins the mandate to run it, when the Islamabad space opens its doors, and how the first cohort shapes up because for a platform built on the premise that her idea deserves to become her enterprise, the real test starts the day the first startup walks in.
Want to know when applications open? Keep an eye on wiselab.org.pk and Ignite’s official channels, we’ll flag it here as soon as there’s a cohort to apply to.
