Career Journey · Strategy & Operations
A decade from a Lahore dorm room to buy-side diligence on 50M to 1.5B GBP deals, building the AI systems myself the whole way.
Scroll to travel2016 · where it starts
BSc Economics
Top 0.01% in the entry exam. Founded the LUMS Consulting Club, secured $10K of sponsorship and ran case-prep for 1,000 students with six consulting firms. The first thing I ever built was an institution.
Feb 2016 to Mar 2019 · the exit
Founder · cloud-kitchen SaaS, Pakistan
Founded and scaled a cloud-kitchen SaaS platform to 35+ restaurant operators on a hybrid subscription and commission model, building the pricing architecture, onboarding funnel and unit economics that made it acquirable. Then ran the sell-side process to close, negotiating an exit to a foodpanda competitor at 5x EBITDA. The first M&A process I ran, from the operator's side of the table.
Founded → Acquired · 5x EBITDAJan 2019 to Aug 2022 · scale
Strategy Associate, promoted twice · Pakistan
Strategy and transformation for a $100M healthcare consulting firm with Pfizer, GSK, Novartis and Roche in its portfolio. Operating-model design, KPI governance and cross-functional delivery across diagnostics and healthcare operations, scaling diagnostics into 24 hospitals.
Sep 2022 to Dec 2024 · the operator
Finance Head (VP) · FMCG pet nutrition, US / Canada / UAE
Ran a 100-day value-creation plan with named owners, KPI targets and weekly cadence. Redesigned pricing and formulation economics across 8 SKUs to expand margin 20% while protecting volumes.
+20% margin2025 · the capstone
MBA
President of the FinTech Club, sole recipient of the MBA'03J Leadership Memorial Scholarship, and a member of the Private Equity Group. Ten years of operating, then the theory.
Mar 2025 to Oct 2025 · building the thing
Investment Associate · 60M GBP B2B-services PE fund
I built an AI-scored screening engine that expanded the qualified pipeline 4x to 1,200+ targets, cut sourcing time, and surfaced the deals that reached IC. Model ML's product, built by hand, by a PE person, before I met Model ML.
4x pipeline · 1,200+ targetsJan 2026 to now · current
Independent · buy-side and sell-side diligence, UK
Origination, screening and pre-deal evaluation for boutique PE funds. Companies House pipelines across 3,000+ managed-service providers, roll-up LBO models, IC materials, and digital-asset M&A on a 1.5B GBP target.
50M to 1.5B GBP EVEverything above, in the form a partner would actually read it.
Hand-built, AI-scored deal screening for a London PE fund. The closest thing to Model ML's product that I have built myself.
Managed-service providers mapped into Companies House pipelines for UK buy-and-build.
Margin expansion across 8 SKUs, volumes protected in UAE and South Asia.
Commercial and financial diligence, QoE-style analysis and LBO / DCF modelling across B2B services, retail, digital assets, healthcare and software.
It's not the pursuit of happiness. It's the happiness of the pursuit.
You don't find the journey. You build it.
Read what I'd do at Model ML →