The Caravan Podcast

The Caravan Podcast
  • 5.0 (5)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Weekly

Journey with us across the Muslim world as we sit down with founders, creatives, and changemakers shaping the future of business and culture. Each episode uncovers personal stories, lessons in faith, and the realities of building something meaningful. 🎙️ New episodes every other Friday 🌍 Listen & learn more at caravanpod.com ☕ Support Us: buymeacoffee.com/caravanpodcast

  1. 2d ago

    Episode 49 | Hiding Your Faith At Work In Germany with Fuad Harzallah

    Fuad Harzallah, founder of Deen@Work, on what it’s like to be a practicing Muslim in the German workplace: prayer in basements, silence in the breakroom, and a 4% response rate for hijabis with foreign names. We talk about marrying young, moving from sales and consulting into founding a company, and how Deen@Work lets employees rate how faith-friendly their employers really are. Recorded in London, days after the platform’s UK launch at Muslim Tech Fest.

  2. Oct 16

    Episode 48 | Umar Munshi Build a Camel Not a Unicorn

    What if the goal was never to build a unicorn, but a camel? Umar Munshi, general partner of Ihsan VC, sits down with us at Muslim Tech Fest in London. He tells the story of losing everything at 26 in Indonesia, discovering Islamic finance, and becoming an accidental pioneer of Islamic fintech. We also cover why the unicorn model has never worked outside the US, how a camel startup builds resilience and real value, and how Muslim investors can put their money to work with the right intention. Caravan Podcast: journeys of faith, creativity, and entrepreneurship from the Muslim world.

  3. Oct 2

    Episode 47 | Youssef El Sayed Built a 350K Audience Telling One Man's Hajj on Horseback

    Youssef El Sayed Built a 350K Audience Telling One Man's Hajj on Horseback What does it take to turn an 8-month, 7,500km pilgrimage into one of the most compelling stories on social media — with no marketing background and almost no budget? Youssef El Sayed, co-founder of Hajj on Horseback, joins the Caravan Podcast to share how a promise made 30 years ago turned into a journey from Spain to Mecca on horseback — and how he built an audience of over 350,000 people telling that story one video at a time. We cover the origin story, the content strategy that led to a viral breakout just 10 days in, the wildest moments from the road, and what's next for the brand. 🎧 New episodes of the Caravan Podcast every week.

  4. Sep 18

    Episode 46 | Rowan Aldean Built the UK's First AI Rental Agent, Watched It Fail, and Exited His Next Company Before 25

    He built the UK's first AI rental agent — and watched it fail. Instead of quitting the game, he moved to San Francisco, rebuilt from scratch, and exited his next company, an AI ops platform for real estate, before most people get their first promotion. This week, Rowan Aldean (founder, Opsansa) joins Caravan to talk through the real, unfiltered version of a startup journey: the day he quit a comfortable job at a $40B fintech, the "founder spiral" that nearly took him out, sleeping in a WeWork pod at 4am, and the acqui-hire negotiation that closed the chapter. Along the way: faith, family, risk, and what it means to actually design a life instead of just a business.

  5. Sep 4

    Episode 45 | How Hamza Mughal's Running Paper Is Fixing Teacher Burnout With AI

    Six hours of marking, done in 20 minutes — that's the promise that won Hamza Mughal £30,000 and the top prize at Muslim Tech Fest Pitch. Hamza is the founder of Running Paper, an AI tool built to grade exams, and in this conversation he walks us through the hard problem: how do you teach a machine to mark like a thoughtful teacher? We get into the business model, who's actually paying for it, and the bigger question looming over the whole industry — are we heading toward a world where AI grades essays that AI wrote?This episode comes to you in partnership with Muslim Tech Fest — thank you for the support.Guest: Hamza Mughal, Founder of Running Paper🔗 Running Paper: https://runningpaper.co.uk/

  6. Aug 21

    Episode 44 | Redwood Founders' Salman Bari: Zero Fees, Zero Equity, and the 99% Everyone Ignores

    Salman Bari, a leading member of the Redwood Founders team, joins the Caravan Podcast to break down how a Warwick University Islamic Society meetup turned into one of London's fastest-growing young builder communities — one that charges zero fees, takes zero equity, and is fully funded by founders who just want to give back. We talk about the failed first attempt (Summer Launchpad), the pivot that actually worked (After Hours), why 99% of UK businesses are SMEs nobody talks about, how they secured free office space in The Shard, and why London might be the next San Francisco. Chapters: 00:00 Cold open 00:45 Welcome to the show 01:31 Growing up in Dublin, moving to London for Warwick 03:47 The "everything but your degree" era 05:22 Meeting Marwan and the 99% SME stat 07:40 First attempt: the NatWest Accelerator and Summer Launchpad 11:31 Why the pivot happened 15:29 Building After Hours from scratch 17:00 Trusting the Redwood team and finding community through faith 22:26 Why they opened up beyond just Muslims 27:12 How Redwood is actually funded 30:17 Free office space and the Hawken Offices story 33:27 This year: The Shard, Google HQ, and London's inflection point 38:11 Batch sizes, zero equity, zero fees 44:24 What it actually costs to run something like this 49:57 Why he shows up every single weekend 53:48 Where he sees opportunity: SaaS vs B2C 59:17 What's next for Salman

  7. Aug 8

    Episode 43: How Saqhib Ali Is Reinventing Finance with 0 Interest Loans

    At Muslim Tech Fest in London, the Caravan Podcast interviews Saqhib Ali, founder of Zeropa, about building an interest-free microfinance alternative for essentials. Saqhib shares how hearing distressed customers while working in Lloyds’ financial distress unit inspired Zeropa’s model, why he chose not to operate as a charity to enable scale, and how the platform lends only when repayments are affordable using income/expenditure analysis, open banking, and behavioral checks. Zeropa provides 0% financing for necessities (mainly food, plus utilities, clothing, furniture, and repairs) by paying retailers directly and earning revenue via retailer rebates so customers never pay more than retail price. He discusses community poverty statistics, misconceptions that Zeropa is only for Muslims (less than 1% of applicants are Muslim), plans for UK FCA authorization and future peer-to-peer licensing, and lessons on lifelong learning and career pivots in an AI-disrupted future. 00:00 Interest and Morality 00:46 Welcome to Muslim Tech Fest 01:43 Why MTF Feels Different 03:18 Early Entrepreneur Roots 04:54 From Medicine to Banking 06:31 Distress Calls Spark Zeropa 08:49 Building Zeropa Model 13:47 Not a Charity Scale 16:37 Who Qualifies for Zero Percent 18:37 Retail Cashback Revenue 22:56 Against Buy Now Pay Later 24:23 Last Resort Lending 25:26 Food Loan Demand 26:44 Repeat Loans Rules 27:41 Pitching The Model 28:59 Muslim Community Reach 31:22 UK Regulation Plans 33:17 Growth And Underwriting 37:48 Affordability Criteria 39:28 True Zero Interest 42:18 Reinventing Yourself 43:13 Never Too Late 47:49 Where To Find Zeropa

  8. Jul 24

    Episode 42 | Hani Chihabi Taking On Big AI with Thawra's Ethical AI

    On the Caravan Podcast in London during Muslim Tech Fest, host interviews Hani Chihabi, 24-year-old co-founder of Thaura AI, an ethical alternative to big tech AI platforms like ChatGPT and Claude. Hani explains Thaura’s mission to counter “surveillance capitalism,” protect users through encrypted data stored in Europe, and avoid reliance on AWS, Azure, or GCP. Launched with Tech for Palestine, Thaura reached 100,000 users in two months without funding or ads, driven by community support and a Discord of contributors. Hani describes quitting a comfortable tech job after feeling complicit while watching Palestine’s suffering, declining investor offers to preserve mission integrity, and exposing an attempted acquisition by an Israeli company. He frames Thaura as a “revolution” to decentralize technology, decolonize the digital landscape, and prioritize truthfulness, sustainability, and user power.

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

Journey with us across the Muslim world as we sit down with founders, creatives, and changemakers shaping the future of business and culture. Each episode uncovers personal stories, lessons in faith, and the realities of building something meaningful. 🎙️ New episodes every other Friday 🌍 Listen & learn more at caravanpod.com ☕ Support Us: buymeacoffee.com/caravanpodcast

Information

  • Creator
    The Caravan Podcast
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    50
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © The Caravan Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Caravan Podcast

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