Tahir Shah, a newly minted foodpreneur at a time when Dubai was beginning to see the first few contemporary homegrown concepts take root, launched Moti Roti in the summer of 2014. His goal? “I want to make Moti Roti go global and become the Chipotle of Pakistani street food.”
Born and raised in Doncaster (a little known Yorkshire town in the north of England),Tahir had quite the journey with his modest roti revolution: from a tiny little pop-up shop at Aswaaq supermarket to an award-winning food truck to the eventual brick and mortar establishment he set up in Jumeirah Lakes Towers, only to eventually close a few months later and seemingly put to rest the Moti Roti dream. Today, he leads commercial expansion for Careem NOW – the food delivery arm of the Middle East’s first unicorn – but he says his entrepreneurial nature is still very much alive and kicking and Moti Roti is set for a reboot!
Here are Tahir’s money lessons in his own words:
Growing up in an immigrant household, I learned to be very careful with money, never prone to lavish or careless spending. As teenagers, my brothers and I all had newspaper routes. We instinctively hoarded our earnings. When the Super Nintendo craze hit, we didn’t even ask our parents to buy it for us. We simply worked out between ourselves how many paper routes we’d each need to do in order to go in on one together…we were quite independent thinkers and taught ourselves to be financially self-sufficient even at that young age!
When I moved to Dubai in 2006, even though I was earning a comfortable salary as an engineer at Nokia, I was mindful not to give in to the subtle social pressure in this city when it comes to constantly spending money on brunches and partying. Keeping up appearances can easily turn into keeping up with your credit card overdue payments.
My brother and I started investing together when I was around 22. As a start it was only in property. Being liable for payments instantly makes you responsible with your money. You start wanting to maximize your income and it feels great to be building equity. After moving to the UAE, I diversified into a new market, while still in my twenties. These investments proved handy when I needed a cash outlay to sustain Moti Roti because there were times I was running out of money very quickly. A young food business needs a significant amount of runway in order to develop scale and for that you need a lot of cash!
I used to live in an apartment I owned in Dubai but when I took the leap to become an entrepreneur, I consciously downsized and moved into a smaller place in Discovery Gardens. It made financial sense to rent out my apartment instead. When you’re bootstrapping a business as a solo-founder, every financial decision has to be deeply scrutinized. I had to be incredibly careful with my money as I was burning through my savings very quickly. I cut back on social engagements and personal expenses as much as I could. Eventually, I had to liquidate some of my investments to bring in some cash for Moti Roti. It’s unfortunate I had to do that but at that point we were on the verge of growing, so it was a trade-off I had to make.
His advice to food entrepreneurs: In hindsight, the lesson I learned is that if you’re looking to scale a food business in Dubai, you need a lot of money not just to cover fixed costs – like your trade license and visas – but also to serve as a runway that gives you enough time to build momentum. This city has a finite market of diners and you want those same customers to keep coming back to you. Even if your concept gets full marks for speed of service, consistency and quality, the average customer today has a short attention span, which makes it harder to build a reputation. You have to shout louder than the others so your existing and potential customers “see you” and “hear you” above all the other noise because this city has hundreds of dining concepts coming out practically every month.
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