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Business Recorder
13-06-2025
- Business
- Business Recorder
In a Pakistan valley, a small revolution among women
KARIMABAD, PAKISTAN: In a sawdust-filled workshop nestled in the Karakoram Mountains, a team of women carpenters chisel away at cabinets – and forge an unlikely career for themselves in Pakistan. Women make up just a fraction of Pakistan's formal workforce. But in a collection of villages sprinkled along the old Silk Road between China and Afghanistan, a group of women-led businesses is defying expectations. 'We have 22 employees and have trained around 100 women,' said Bibi Amina, who launched her carpentry workshop in 2008 at the age of 30. In a collection of villages sprinkled along the old Silk Road between China and Afghanistan, a group of women-led businesses is defying expectations. Photo: AFP Hunza Valley's population of around 50,000, spread across mountains abounding with apricot, cherry, walnut and mulberry orchards, belong to the Ismaili branch of Shiite Islam. The Aga Khan is the spiritual leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslim community and is considered a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. He is also a global philanthropist and founder of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), which promotes health, education, culture, and economic development in over 30 countries. A blueprint for climate resilience: The impact of AKAH in Northern Pakistan The family opened a girls' school in Hunza in 1946, kickstarting an educational investment that pushed the valley's literacy rate to 97 percent for both men and women. That rate far outstrips the country average of around 68 percent for men and 52.8 percent for women. Only 23 percent of the women in Pakistan were officially part of the labour force as of 2024, according to data from the World Bank. Photo: AFP As a result, attitudes have shifted, and women like Amina are taking expanded roles. 'People thought women were there to wash dishes and do laundry,' Amina said of the generation before her. Trained by the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) to help renovate the ancient Altit Fort, Amina later used her skills to start her own business. Her carpenters are currently at work on a commission from a luxury hotel. Photo: AFP Pioneers Only 23 percent of the women in Pakistan were officially part of the labour force as of 2024, according to data from the World Bank. In rural areas, women rarely take on formal employment but often toil in the fields to support the family's farming income. In a Gallup poll published last year, a third of women respondents said their father or husband forbade them from taking a job, while 43.5 percent said they had given up work to devote themselves to domestic tasks. Fahima Qayyum (L) practices with other players at a football ground in Gilgit, in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan. Photo: AFP Cafe owner Lal Shehzadi spearheaded women's restaurant entrepreneurship in Hunza. She opened her cafe at the top of a winding high street to supplement her husband's small army pension. Sixteen years later, her simple set-up overlooking the valley has become a popular night-time tourist attraction. She serves visitors traditional cuisine, including yak meat, apricot oil and rich mountain cheese. 'At the start, I used to work alone,' she said. 'Now, 11 people work here and most of them are women. And my children are also working here.' Following in Shehzadi's footsteps, Safina quit her job to start her own restaurant around a decade ago. 'No one wanted to help me,' she said. Eventually, she convinced family members to sell two cows and a few goats for the money she needed to launch her business. Now, she earns the equivalent of around $170 a month, more than 15 times her previous income. Farming to football The socio-economic progress of women in Hunza compared to other rural areas of Pakistan has been driven by three factors, according to Sultan Madan, the head of the Karakoram Area Development Organisation and a local historian. 'The main reason is the very high literacy rate,' he told AFP, largely crediting the Aga Khan Foundation for funding training programmes for women. 'Secondly, agriculture was the backbone of the economy in the region, but in Hunza the landholding was meagre and that was why women had to work in other sectors.' Women's increased economic participation has spilled into other areas of life, like sports fields. 'Every village in the valley has a women's soccer team: Gojal, Gulmit, Passu, Khyber, Shimsal,' said Nadia Shams, 17. On a synthetic pitch, she trains with her teammates in jogging pants or shorts, forbidden elsewhere by Pakistan's dress code. Here, one name is on everyone's lips: Malika-e-Noor, the former vice-captain of the national team who scored the winning penalty against the Maldives in the 2010 South Asian Women's Football Championship. Fahima Qayyum was six years old when she witnessed the killer kick. Today, after several international matches, she is recruiting the next generation. 'As a girl, I stress to others the importance of playing, as sport is very good for health,' she told AFP. 'If they play well, they can also get scholarships.'
CNBC
25-04-2025
- Business
- CNBC
38-year-old turned his New York apartment into a 'spice warehouse'—now his company brings in $8 million a year
When Ethan Frisch first tasted wild-grown cumin hand-picked in Afghanistan's Hindu Kush mountains in 2012, he was shocked. A former chef who once worked in a Michelin-starred restaurant in New York, Frisch traveled rural Afghanistan as an infrastructure program coordinator for the Aga Khan Development Network, a group of agencies that support rural development, health and education initiatives throughout Asia and Africa. The quality of the spices he encountered — even at small markets and roadside restaurants — blew him away. "I thought I knew my way around a spice cabinet. And then I realized that there was a whole world of spices that I had not had access to, that were not really being imported to the U.S.," says Frisch, 38. The wild-grown cumin inspired Frisch and his longtime friend Ori Zohar, 39, to co-found New York-based Burlap & Barrel, which sells kitchen spices sourced directly from small-scale farmers around the world. Each man chipped in around $20,000 to launch the company in 2016, they say: Frisch emptied his life savings, and Zohar, a serial entrepreneur, pulled his money from a mortgage tech startup he was business has been profitable since Day 1, says Frisch. It grew its annual gross revenue from roughly $100,000 in its first full year to nearly $8 million in 2024, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Sourcing directly from farmers is the key, says Frisch. For the three years he worked in Afghanistan, he spent his free time using his international development contacts to build a network of small-scale farmers, in countries ranging from Guatemala to Zanzibar. The business model allows Burlap & Barrel to skip markups from the industry's brokers and middlemen, while paying the farmers anywhere from double to more than 10 times what they'd typically receive for their crops, Frisch says. $40,000 in startup funds may sound like a lot of money, but Frisch and Zohar — who serve as co-CEOs — felt financially pressured by the costs of travel and spice acquisition, they say. Instead of renting office space, they worked from Frisch's Queens apartment, which he'd managed to register as a "spice warehouse" with the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. "We went to IKEA [and] bought shelving. We made a packing area, a storage area and a shipping area. We really transformed his entire living room into a spice production facility," says Zohar, noting that whenever he left Frisch's apartment, his clothes smelled so strongly of spices that they inevitably "had to go through the wash." Frisch and Zohar didn't take salaries until 2018, with Frisch surviving on unemployment benefits and "living on scrambled eggs" as they sold mostly to restaurants around New York, he says. The co-founders took minimum-wage salaries in 2018 before ramping up to more livable wages the following year, they say. When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived, they worried they'd be out of business: Restaurants were their biggest source of revenue. Instead, at-home cooks splurged on $10 jars of high-end spices from Burlap & Barrel's website to step up their culinary game with fancy restaurants shuttered. A Bon Appetit review of the brand's Vietnamese cinnamon in February 2020 helped, Frisch notes. "By May, home cooks had more than made up for the sales that we had lost from restaurants," says Zohar, adding that Burlap & Barrel ultimately brought in roughly $3 million in 2020 sales. The company now packs and ships all of its spices from warehouses in Las Vegas and Hagerstown, Maryland. Burlap & Barrel has landed partnerships with chefs like Martha Stewart and Marc Murphy, and placement on FX's television show "The Bear." The company appeared on an April 2023 episode of ABC's "Shark Tank" — an idea the co-founders credit to Zohar's mother, an "avid" viewer of the show — which sent its website traffic "through the roof" before the episode finished airing, Zohar says. Burlap & Barrel faces a few obstacles to its continued expansion. One is its price point: Burlap & Barrel products cost roughly the same as comparable items from other luxury spice providers like Diaspora Co. and Evermill, but noticeably more than basic grocery store spices. A 1.8-ounce jar of Burlap & Barrel's bestselling Royal Cinnamon costs $9.99, while a 4-ounce container of cinnamon from food giant McCormick & Company costs just $6.66 on Amazon. Eventually, Frisch and Zohar will run out of potential new customers willing to pay the upcharge, particularly with many Americans wary of rising grocery costs, they note. A potential solution, they say, is to sell products beyond kitchen spices. Burlap & Barrel typically launches 50 new products each year, which last year included a line of single-origin sugars and a partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute on jars of honey from Tanzania. Another challenge lies in the U.S. tariffs announced by President Donald Trump on April 2. Burlap & Barrel sources spices from a variety of countries named in Trump's initial policy announcement, which is now in the middle of a 90-day pause and currently replaced by a baseline 10% tariff on all imported goods. If Trump's original rates go into effect in July, Burlap & Barrel could pay a 46% import rate on spices from Vietnam, or a 26% rate on products from India. The company plans to absorb any added tariff costs for the foreseeable future, Frisch says. But the uncertainty made the co-founders recalculate their expectations for 2025: Instead of forecasting 10% revenue growth over last year, they now hope to merely match 2024's sales figures, they say. Burlap & Barrel would still turn a profit with that result, adds Zohar. Longer-term, the co-founders remain optimistic, they say. If the tariffs get rolled back, they can resume business as usual. If the U.S. economy suffers, whether from tariff fallout or inflation, more people could skip eating out at restaurants in favor of staying home and cooking for themselves, they predict. "We're expecting to grow a lot in the next few years," says Zohar, adding: "The spices in your grocery store are stale and unimpressive."
Express Tribune
19-03-2025
- Health
- Express Tribune
PM urges efforts to eradicate Hepatitis C
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday called for coordinated efforts by federal and provincial governments and all stakeholders to eradicate Hepatitis C from Pakistan, vowing to promote and expand the PM's Hepatitis C Elimination Programme countrywide. Speaking at a recognition ceremony in Islamabad, marking the successful completion of the pilot project of the PM's National Hepatitis C Elimination Programme in Gilgit-Baltistan, the prime minister emphasised the importance of the initiative in addressing the widespread impact of the disease in the country. Acknowledging the significant support from the Aga Khan Development Network and the World Health Organization (WHO) in this initiative, he said that the hepatitis unit was initially established at the Pakistan Kidney and Liver Institute (PKLI) and was later expanded to provide 100% free treatment facilities. The prime minister expressed regret that when the new government took office in 2018, the programme was discontinued. However, he said that shortly after assuming the office of prime minister, he resumed the programme, which was now operational in Punjab under the leadership of Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz. "We see a bright future of Gilgit-Baltistan and subsequently other parts of Pakistan," he said expressing the confidence that with the efforts of the incumbent government, Hepatitis C will be completely erased from the country soon. "This aggressive disease is spreading. This is high time to effectively control this disease," he noted. The prime minister told the gathering the federal government was in the process of establishing Jinnah Medical Centre in Islamabad which would prove to John Hopkins Hospital of Pakistan in public healthcare. Earlier, he distributed shields among the contributors to the pilot project of Gilgit-Baltistan including Minister for Health Services Syed Mustafa Kamal, Minister of State Dr Malik Mukhtar Ahmad Bharath, Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal, Nadra chairman, WHO representative in Pakistan and others. Speaking on the occasion, Ahsan Iqbal highlighted that Pakistan had the highest spread of Hepatitis C, calling it a matter of great concern. He said the success of hepatitis programme manifested the model of public-private partnership and also the coordination between federal and provincial governments. He said the government was hopeful of eliminating the disease 2029 as the Prime Minister's Hepatitis C elimination programme will not only save millions of lives but also contribute to boosting the country's economic productivity. Minister for National Health Syed Mustafa Kamal, lauding the prime minister's vision of eliminating Hepatitis C from the country, assured him of his full support to successfully eliminate the disease from the country by 2030. World Health Organization (WHO) Representative in Pakistan Dr Lou Dapeng said the Organization will continue to stand side by side with Pakistan in supporting its programme to completely eliminate the disease.
Express Tribune
12-02-2025
- General
- Express Tribune
Prince Rahim Aga Khan V accedes as 50th imam
LISBON: Prince Rahim Aga Khan V formally acceded as the 50th hereditary Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslim community in a historic ceremony held at The Diwan of the Ismaili Imamat in Lisbon, Portugal. The event, attended by global leaders of the Ismaili community, marked the official transition of leadership following the passing of his father, Prince Karim Aga Khan IV. During the ceremony, Ismaili leaders from around the world pledged spiritual allegiance to the new Imam on behalf of the global Ismaili community. The momentous occasion was livestreamed in Jamatkhanas (places of gathering) across more than 35 countries, allowing Ismailis worldwide to participate virtually. In his address, Aga Khan V paid tribute to his late father, Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, and expressed gratitude to his family for their support. He also thanked the governments of Portugal and Egypt for their recognition of his father's contributions and for facilitating dignified funeral arrangements. Speaking to the international community for the first time as their Imam, Aga Khan V pledged to dedicate his life to care for the spiritual and material well-being of the Ismaili Jamat. He underscored the core principles of the Ismaili Muslim faith, stressing the importance of maintaining a balance between spiritual and worldly responsibilities. His message centred on universal values of peace, tolerance, inclusion and humanitarian service, urging his followers to actively contribute to the societies in which they live. He also called upon the Ismaili community to take a leadership role in addressing climate change, stressing the need for environmental responsibility. Having been deeply involved in the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) for decades, Aga Khan V pledged to continue fostering stability while embracing measured change. He reaffirmed his commitment to maintaining strong partnerships with governments and international organisations, following in his father's footsteps to promote peace, stability and sustainable development.
Arab News
11-02-2025
- Business
- Arab News
Pakistan president meets Prince Rahim Aga Khan V, condoles over death of his ‘visionary' father
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari on Monday met with Prince Rahim Al-Hussaini Aga Khan V, spiritual leader of the Ismaili community, in Portugal's capital Lisbon and extended his condolences over the death of his 'visionary' father, Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, the Pakistani foreign ministry said. The late Aga Khan IV, who led the global Ismaili community for nearly seven decades, passed away last week at the age of 88. His death was announced by the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) and the Ismaili religious community. A private funeral service took place at the Ismaili community center in Lisbon on Saturday, attended by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Spanish King Juan Carlos, Portugal's President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Pakistan's Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb. He was laid to rest on Sunday at a private ceremony in Aswan, Egypt. Following the late Aga Khan's passing, his eldest son, Prince Rahim Al-Hussaini, 53, was named the Aga Khan V, the 50th hereditary Imam of the Ismaili community, in accordance with his father's will. 'Remembering the late Aga Khan as a visionary leader and humanitarian, the President praised his exceptional contributions to education, health care, and poverty alleviation,' the Pakistani foreign ministry said. 'He highlighted the Aga Khan Development Network's (AKDN) lasting impact, including its vital role in Pakistan's progress, particularly in underserved regions.' Founded by the late Ismaili leader, the AKDN has been instrumental in various development projects in Pakistan, particularly in Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral regions. Initiatives such as the Aga Khan Rural Support Program have focused on poverty alleviation, health care, education and cultural preservation, significantly contributing to the socio-economic development of these areas. The Ismaili community in Pakistan, numbering in hundreds of thousands, has benefited from these initiatives, which have also had a positive impact on the national economy through improved infrastructure and human development. During Monday's meeting, Prince Rahim Aga Khan V thanked the Pakistan president for his condolences and reaffirmed his family's commitment to continuing the mission of service and development, according to the Pakistani foreign ministry. Zardari will also meet his Portuguese counterpart during his trip to the country, according to Pakistani state media.
