Bread Brothers | Kabul Bread Shop Beating Bad Times By Baking Bread

by admin / Wednesday, 20 January 2016 / Published in News Blog

Suleman Fatimie and Shakib Noori, both management graduates from Pakistan’s Preston University, have given up promising careers and invested their life savings in a bakery in the Afghan capital – despite the World Bank’s most recent official assessment describing the country’s medium-term outlook as “unfavorable”.

Growth is unlikely to exceed 2 per cent, a sluggish rate compared with other Asian economies, the bank believes, and according to some estimates, some two million Afghans are unemployed.

“We thought hard – how can we help change the situation?” said Suleman Fatimie, who was previously chief executive of Afghanistan’s export promotion agency. “A good, sustainable business has the power to improve lives of those involved. So, we decided to set up a venture.

“A bakery was a natural choice as Afghans are fond of food – and most are addicted to bread.”

Suleman Fatimie and Shakib Noori invested $30,000 (£20,700) to set up the bakery which they named Khanagi – which means “home-made” in the Dari language. It is barely visible in the shadows of supermarkets, hotels and banks at the centre of the plush Kabul neighbourhood of Shar-e-Now. But the powerful aroma of freshly-baked naan, the flat bread that is an Afghan staple for breakfast, lunch and dinner, fills the street whenever customers open Khanagi’s glass door.

Facebook and Twitter have helped to spread the word about Khanagi. “We get dozens of calls every day from young men, small business owners and entrepreneurs who are keen to learn from our experience,” said Shakib Noori, the other co-founder of Khanagi, previously Afghanistan’s economic attaché to the US.

“We have had a bubble economy in which donor funds have been running businesses. They have now gone. In a way that is good because now people are thinking about setting up businesses that are sustainable.

“Look at Khanagi. It’s been just a few weeks and we are already getting orders for 1,000 breads a day. My only advice to Afghan entrepreneurs is ‘Think small, do small.’ And then big will follow.”