Ayesha Malik

I graduated from IBA in 2014 convinced I'd spend my life in investment banking. Got a great offer at a top bank in Karachi, spent two years building financial models at 2 AM, and realized I was miserable. The turning point was a weekend hackathon my friend dragged me to. We built a terrible app, but something clicked — I loved the process of figuring out what people actually needed and building it. That's product thinking, I just didn't know the word yet. I quit banking (my parents thought I'd lost it), did a short product management bootcamp online, and cold-emailed 40 startups. Careem responded. Joined as a junior PM when they were still small, and grew with the company through the Uber acquisition. The finance background wasn't wasted — it gave me the analytical rigor that most PMs lack. I just had to find the right container for those skills. Now I lead a product team of 12, and I still think that terrible hackathon app was the best thing I ever built.