Usman Iftikhar

Usman Iftikhar is the co-founder and CEO of Catalysr, an award-winning startup incubator which empowers migrant and refugee entrepreneurs (aka migrapreneurs) to launch their own startups. Since 2016, Catalysr has supported 684 migrapreneurs. He’s also a commercialisation facilitator at the AusIndustry’s Entrepreneurs’ Program, helping early stage startups access upto $1m in grant funding to commercialise.

Usman is a 2020 Stanford GSB alumnus, a 2019 Obama Leader, an EHF Fellow, WEF Global Shaper, 2019 Westpac Social Change Fellow, 2018 AMP Tomorrow Maker, Singularity University’s GSP 2017 Fellow, and a Young Social Pioneer alumnus at FYA. In 2018, Usman was named the Commonwealth Young Person of the Year. In 2019, he was named as one of the top 50 on Kochie’s Business Builders Power list with Google, on Smart Company’s 30 under 30 list, and also won the Western Sydney Leadership Award for Entrepreneurial Achievement. In 2020, Usman was declared a winner in the ‘Entrepreneurship’ category, for the 40 under 40 Most Influential Asian-Australian Leadership Awards.