Fatima Shah

Everyone in my MBA cohort went into consulting or banking. I went into... meal kits for middle-class Pakistani families. My mother still introduces me as "the one who left McKinsey to cook food." Here's how it happened: I was 2 years into a strategy consulting role, flying to Lahore and Islamabad every week, making great money, and feeling completely disconnected from anything that mattered. One night in a hotel room in Islamabad, I read a report about childhood malnutrition in Pakistan and couldn't sleep. The next morning, I started sketching what would become NourishPK — affordable, nutritionally-optimized meal kits delivered to families. Not the bougie meal kits you see in the US. Think daal, roti, sabzi — but designed by nutritionists and priced for middle-income families. It took me 6 months to leave consulting. I was terrified. No startup experience, no tech background, no co-founder. Just a problem I couldn't stop thinking about. Three years in, we're serving 2,000 families in Karachi, have a team of 35, and just raised our seed round. It's the hardest thing I've ever done — I've cried in my car more times than I'll admit. But also the most alive I've ever felt. The MBA helped more than I expected. Not the classes (sorry, professors) but the network. Half my early customers came from IBA alumni WhatsApp groups.