At three in the morning, Usman Iftikhar was stocking shelves at a service station. He had moved from Pakistan to Australia in 2013, earned a master’s degree in engineering management, and applied for more than a thousand jobs. His qualifications were present. The opportunities were conspicuously absent.
That episode, recalled in a Westpac Scholars profile, is the useful starting point for Catalysr. Before the workshops and founder dinners came a question: what happens when someone capable of doing more cannot find a way into the economy?
- Startup education and mentoring for migrant and refugee founders.
- More than 1,300 participants and 300 businesses, by Catalysr’s count.
- Free NSW and Accelerate programs; other programs have distinct costs.
- A local network comes with the lessons.
The first business was the wrong answer
Iftikhar tried entrepreneurship himself. His clean-tech startup failed. A mentor then challenged him to solve a real problem he had experienced. The result was Catalysr, co-founded with Jacob Muller in Parramatta in 2016. Iftikhar’s difficulty finding meaningful employment supplied the problem; other migrants encountering similar barriers supplied the reason to keep going.
The organisation calls its participants “Migrapreneurs.” It is a cheerful piece of vocabulary with a serious premise: a person can arrive with skills, ambition and experience while lacking the introductions that make those assets useful in a new country.
In the beginning, good intentions did not settle the bills. In Westpac’s 2023 reporting, Iftikhar described an organisation that had supported fewer than 100 people and was unsure of its future. His 2019 Social Change Fellowship brought mentoring, international learning and help with strategy. The founder supporting other founders needed support himself.
A network with homework attached
Catalysr occupies the space between wanting to start and knowing how to proceed. Its expertise combines startup fundamentals, coaching and access to Australian business networks. The participants are founders; the service is a sequence of opportunities to practise, ask questions and make decisions.
The NSW Migrapreneur Fellowship illustrates the arrangement. Its second 2026 intake is scheduled for 15 October to 3 December: eight weeks of masterclasses, coaching and hybrid sessions, with in-person evenings at Haymarket HQ in Sydney. Recorded sessions make participation more practical for regional founders and people balancing work, study or family.
The curriculum uses lean startup methods. Non-technical founders can learn no-code and low-code tools to test ideas. Completion also brings continuing access to alumni, events and mentors, plus a priority pathway into the growth-focused Accelerate program. The fellowship’s published workload is roughly three to four hours a week.
For a more developed venture, the published 2025 Accelerate format offered three months of support for up to 25 startups. Each founder met an entrepreneur-in-residence weekly. Workshops and introductions added specialist help. Four A$2,500 grants were offered with TechVisa to ease early operating expenses.
Neither those grants nor a mentor’s introduction can guarantee investment. The useful promise is narrower: someone experienced will look at the problem with you, repeatedly, while a cohort gives you reasons to keep showing up.
Free has a funding model
Accelerate’s published terms charge no fee and take no equity. The NSW fellowship is fully subsidised. Someone still pays. A Westpac Scholars account describes a charitable foundation supported by philanthropy and grants alongside a separate proprietary entity earning income from work with councils and universities.
A public NSW contract makes part of that arrangement concrete: estimated payments of A$220,000, including GST, for a Diversity Pre-Accelerator Program contract running from April 2026 to May 2028. That is a delivery contract, rather than a venture-capital round.
Fully subsidised
Hardship scholarships available
Plus flights, visas and incidentals
Melbourne Migrapreneurs adds an inventive detail. Delivered with the City of Melbourne and Arctic 90, it charges a A$100 commitment fee and offers full scholarships for financial hardship. The collected fees go into a pool awarded back to outstanding founders as validation grants. Selected validation-sprint participants are offered A$1,000 grants for testing expenses.
Its two streams recognise that an untested idea and a business with customers require different conversations. Catalysr runs ideation; Arctic 90 handles traction. Asking everyone to learn the same thing at the same time would be administratively pleasant and educationally peculiar.
The mentor is allowed to be wrong
Catalysr’s difference also lies in how it treats advice. Iftikhar has discussed the influence mentors and investors carry, particularly where cultural habits make questioning authority uncomfortable. Founder agency matters: accepting help should not mean surrendering judgment.
“I was really understimulated and underutilised.”
Usman Iftikhar, recalling his early working life in Australia
That principle offers something other organisations can copy. Pair people with experienced mentors, provide regular opportunities to test assumptions, and make disagreement acceptable. The mentor’s job is to improve the founder’s thinking; obedience is a poor substitute for evidence.
There are practical limits. Programs are delivered in English. Eligibility varies by location and stage. Accelerate concentrates on technology and social-impact ventures, and directs conventional small businesses toward SSI Ignite or Thrive Refugee Enterprise. Founders who cannot attend regularly, or who chiefly need a loan, may need a different kind of help.
When the newcomer becomes the bridge
The 2026 Victoria India Market Makers initiative extends the idea. With Vaurora Social Impact and Victorian Government support, it offers preparation for up to 20 Indian-Australian entrepreneurs based in Victoria, with up to ten selected for a planned Mumbai and Bangalore delegation. Here, overseas connections become a business resource.
Catalysr reports participants from 87 countries, with women accounting for 48%. Its cumulative business count describes activity, not a survival rate. Yet the proposition remains worth examining: match support to the founder’s circumstances, then keep the community available after class ends. For someone starting again, knowing whom to ask can change what happens next.