Most of us wouldn’t think twice if we needed to replace our prescription glasses. However, for millions living in developing countries, changing glasses — even when required, is a matter of privilege, not a right. This reality is probably something that most don’t spend much time pondering over, thanks to consumer behaviour today. However, for Hamza Iqbal from Pakistan, this fact was more than just food for thought.
With a modest application of business acumen, a wider perspective on trade and a healthy application of humanity, the young man from Pakistan got an online business going, even before he graduated from university.
Chashmay.com is a site selling premium prescription eyewear. What sets this business apart, is that for every pair sold, another pair goes out to someone in need. Hamza’s ‘smart’ retailing idea not only leapfrogged traditional sales, it broke even in just 21 hours of going live.
Georgetown University graduate Hamza Iqbal talks to Community about his inspiration, challenges, dreams and experiences.
Tell us something about yourself
I just completed my undergraduate degree from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service in Qatar, with a focus on International Politics. During my first two years of college, I was involved with the local varsity debate circle, bringing back trophies to my alma mater. Over the last four years, I also spent a lot of time learning Arabic, both on campus in Qatar, and in Jordan over an intensive summer programme. Having exhausted the opportunities that were available to me, I set out to finding my own unique set of interests outside of Education City. I have a serious travel bug, and have pretty much been living out of two suitcases over these past four years, all packed and ready to set off on an adventure, at a moment’s notice. There have been semesters where I’ve left the country more often than I left campus!
You have an online business venture — how is it different from other businesses?
Chashmay.com is all about premium prescription eyewear, and is named after the word for glasses in Urdu, Hindi, certain dialects of Khaleeji Arabic, and central Asian languages. It is a social venture. For every pair sold, a pair goes out to someone in need through an NGO in Karachi, Pakistan.
Essentially, the model is based off a design-thinking innovation. High costs of retail space rentals end up being a major chunk of what we pay for, when we shop at a fancy mall, especially for low-volume retail items like eyewear. Bypassing rental costs allow us to include a social contribution to every transaction, while offering free shipping worldwide and still beating our competitor’s price levels.
The company is incorporated in Hong Kong, managed remotely in Doha and Istanbul and sells to customers worldwide. On the agenda for chashmay.com in the coming weeks is a brand new product line and grand campaign online.
What inspired the idea?
During my time at ‘Semester at Sea’, I was in Shanghai. Fearing I had lost my glasses I went scouring around the markets looking for a pair. I found a tiny design store that retailed high quality eyewear, for a fraction of the price of my previous pair that I had bought during a seasonal sale in Milan. That got me thinking of the high mark-ups that we end up paying, for our purchases.
The following summer, I was working in Istanbul for a firm that offered business development services to some of the biggest e-commerce firms in Europe, and this allowed me to see the inner workings of an online store and made me realise how do-able it was. My friends from back home volunteer at an NGO that Chashmay.com now partners with. So basically connecting the dots along my network was how I got there.
Being in my last year of college meant that it had to be an online store, to keep my goals realistic while taking a full academic coursework. We went live in mid-February this year and ever since the response has been great. We broke-even on our costs in less than 21 hours of going online. Initially, all the orders were from friends, but as word got around, we began getting orders from people I didn’t know personally. Being able to have that level of trust in the market has been the true metric for success on this venture.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced in your business?
Making the initial leap was the hardest part for sure. What I find really interesting is that for some reason, we tend to see business as unrealistically difficult. If you’ve been a customer, you can be a merchant. If you’ve stood on one side of the counter, it shouldn’t be hard to stand on the other side and think through the mind of a customer. I feel, as long as you’re willing to listen and understand, everything is within your reach.
Share with us your experiences of the ‘Semester at Sea’.
It is a varsity study abroad programme like none other. I got to explore comparative global business and social entrepreneurship in 14 countries across 4 continents. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it has been the single-most influential experience of my life so far. We started from the United States and went in and out of 14 countries, across four continents to dock in the United Kingdom.
You wake up in a new country almost every week for four long months, dissecting, observing, learning and understanding our collective human existence and its multiple realities, some vile and vulgar, others unimaginably beautiful and impossible to explain. At the end of the day, it has helped me learn a lot about myself, and what I want to do with the privilege of life, health and opportunity. It made me realise how everything is really within our reach because the world we live in, is tiny.
It was only after this experience that I found the courage within myself to launch a social venture of my own.
What are your other interests?
I love cooking and watching foreign language films. I have this thing where I attempt one new thing every day. It could be anything, from trying out a recipe or meeting a person I’ve never spoken to on campus, to trying the surprisingly impeccable Karwa bus service that I did recently! (Today, I made a stove-top espresso for the first time). Regular doses of adrenaline, no matter how small are important.
What is your dream?
To expand my social ventures further, potentially into a lot of other product categories. I believe changing the way money exchanges hands in our economies is the way forward, especially as socio-economic inequalities around the world have reached their highest levels in history. The Chashmay logo has a ‘+1’ as superscript, that represents a one-for-one social contribution for every transaction made. If you see that notation somewhere else in the future, you’ll know it’s my next venture!
What motivates or inspires you?
Energy, creativity and good music are the three main forces that inspire me. I think the ability to not take ‘no’ for an answer, and to not negotiate with others on your aims, aspirations and values, is high up on the list too.
How would you describe your life right now?
Incredibly rewarding, I am the happiest I’ve ever been and with energy that keeps me up at night. Not going to exaggerate but the reality of now, is far better than what I could have ever dreamt of. I am aware that there will be crusts and troughs along the way, as is the case with anything worth achieving, but I feel confident that I’m ready to take on my next challenge, no matter when or where that may be.
Lessons learnt from life
There is no malicious intent or evil in the world; there’s only fear and half-understood perspectives. I believe people who think otherwise, practically build prison walls around themselves thinking that they are under threat, and demonise others. They enter into a cycle of antagonism, which invariably results in conflict. The world would be a much better place if people learnt to listen and trust each other, at least more often, if not always!
