Pod#158 - Neelam Shoaib - How Shadiyana.pk Is Revolutionizing Pakistani Weddings!

These week we have Neelam Shoaib, one of the co-founders of Shadiyana.pk on the show! Shadiyana is a startup she and her friend Izzah started aimed at easing the process of actually putting together a wedding. From venues to makeup artists to photographers, they offer a comprehensive list of options in the Islamabad-Rawalpindi area, along with a popular content creation push aimed at addressing the many problems in and around weddings and married life in Pakistan. Good chat!   Things discussed in this episode:   00:00 Intro  02:00 Why are they reaching out to podcasters?  03:38 Why did Neelam decide to study software engineering?  07:56 Deciding corporate jobs are not for them, moving into post-grad programs  12:44 When does The Idea occur?  17:15 Identifying the problem they were trying to solve - Pakistan’s nightmare shaadi logistics  23:41 Issues faced by vendors in the age of social media and how Shadiyana could help  28:04 Convincing users and vendors about the idea, having to explain what a website is  32:06 What is their business model? How did they decide the company would fund itself?  38:17 Young women in tech - how did the wedding market react? How do their parents feel?  46:09 How Neelam & Izzah split their responsibilities, extra scrutiny on women in the market  50:28 Shadiyana’s operations - how many customers & vendors they have, site traffic  54:51 Shadiyana’s finances - their thoughts on outside investors, their current finances  59:31 How Pakistan’s economics link to their work, challenges with future expansion to Lahore & Karachi  1:04:58 How thoughtful & intentional content creation is a key part of their outlook, not just marketing  1:08:54 How important is content creation for them? Would they ever pivot to it completely?  1:12:06 Jinn Story!  1:14:56 Outro   LINKS:  The website: https://shadiyana.pk/  Their instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shadiyana.pk/    Support the podcast by becoming a monthly patron on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/tprpod) or send a one-off token on Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/tprpod)!   Find all our previous episodes on SoundCloud, Spotify & Apple Podcasts and follow us all on Twitter! Links to everything below!  SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/tprpod Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6PvTahp... Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tprpod/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TPRPod  Ali: https://twitter.com/themaholupper Rizwan: https://twitter.com/RizwanTakkhar Sarkhail: https://twitter.com/Sarkhail7Khan