Post by Mohamed Gaafar

In 1983, my dad moved from Sudan to the UK to pursue his PhD in agriculture. He opened the first Middle Eastern store in Reading instead - The Nile Store. Academia may have been his start, but business is where his heart always was - spotting a gap, finding ways to help others. Something I got to witness growing up. The store became a hub, not just for fresh produce but for others looking for a taste of home. My siblings and I would help out, stocking shelves, pricing items, and occasionally cramming in school studies and snacks at the till. We saw the difficulties up close - the toll on him and my mum, felt the missed occasions, the absence at family holidays, the people and partners that let him down. The pain of moving on when he had to shut shop. And the resilience to go again. Nobody in my family had a playbook for entrepreneurship - there were no programmes, warm intros or venture models. Many of us who are second generation immigrants have lived in an interesting paradox. We've been encouraged to pursue studies and academia in search of upward social mobility, but we've watched our parents rely as much on entrepreneurship, resilience and instincts to make it through. So when I got accepted into Zinc, a 6-month startup programme with a £2,000 monthly stipend, something hit me. I'm being handed a viable pathway into entrepreneurship, with funding, mentors, and a runway. He had to figure it all out alone. If he'd had even a fraction of these opportunities, who knows what he could have done. I'm proud and grateful for all he accomplished. And if he could build what he built with nothing, I had no excuse not to go all in. Before now, I'd shared this with very few people. As it's both very personal and something deep inside that drives me. When an investor changed the terms they'd already agreed to. When a 6-month programme ended with no funding and no plan. When it's just three of us trying to do the work of ten. Every time, I think about my dad's entrepreneurship journey and what he managed to do without any of this. And it reminds me - the Nile runs through me and I have a lot more in store 😁.