Mashable Pakistan Lab

Mashable Pakistan Lab is an interview series built around people making new things in Pakistan, and around the obstacles they run into along the way. A host sits down with one guest or with a pair of them. The guest list is hard to pin to a single beat. Episode titles name startups such as Tello Talk, Car Helpline, Bayfikr and Grandeur Technologies, alongside writers including Usman T. Malik, Arslan Athar and Saba Karim Khan. There are also episodes on cosplay with Asad Shams and Sameen Rahat, on handwriting analysis with Saman Aslam, and on mixed martial arts with Bashir Ahmed. Titles carrying the Hacktivate name are co-branded with the National Incubation Center, and the competition episodes follow the same idea, with winners of the Nutribiz 2021 Innovation Challenge and the National Hepatitis C Hackathon 2021 explaining what they built. In the hepatitis C episode, the host frames the stakes first, citing an estimate of 11 million people in Pakistan living with the virus, before the guests turn to causes such as used needles that are not disposed of properly. The Nanodetectors team describes nanoparticles that produce a color reaction to the virus and a strip designed so that anyone, not only a lab expert, can read the result. The Nutribiz episode moves easily between English and Urdu. There, a Farm to Home representative explains buying produce straight from farmers, storing it and selling it below market rates, while the founder of Askur describes a honey business that brings women into beekeeping, a field long treated as men's work. A practical worry runs through several of these talks. The host asks directly why Pakistani research so often stops at the lab, and the hepatitis C guests point to a reluctant industry and a missing link to the market. With Beenisch Tahir, the host raises a related gap: startups with strong technical ideas but little mentoring on the business side. Tahir, who heads the UNDP Innovation Accelerator Lab, explains that it is not a startup incubator, walks through exploration, solution mapping and experimentation, and closes with advice to be firm and humble rather than a pushover. Not every episode is about business. Sports journalist Umaid Wasim talks about football in a country that thinks of cricket first, describing a domestic system without club culture and a federation weighed down by politics. Graphic designer Sabdezar Irfan discusses Grey Matter, a graphic novel about a young couple that touches on mental health and co-dependency, and recalls emailing an artist she admired, which led her to her publisher. She also urges aspiring artists to learn from online platforms and other artists rather than waiting for a formal course. The host comes across as warm and supportive, often ending with good wishes for the guest's next step. The hepatitis C conversation is the most concrete look at the startup side, while the Sabdezar Irfan episode shows the series at its most personal.