For me my business journey started a couple of years ago when I entered the real estate business and when I was doing my real estate business I came across a lot of problems that people were facing primarily the end user the people that were the clients or the end user of this industry were usually worse off, primarily because the way the industry structured; the way societies hand out files and everything In this there is a big risk for the user especially when there are open files (files that donot specify where exactly the pice of land exists when they are buying), too often it happens that the buyer of these files not end up getting what they intended for and we have countless examples of renowned brands where people invested in property and hope to get good returns on those investments or be able to use those pieces of land to build a home.

So how it happens, most of the societies that are functioning in the market would hand out open forms or open files that then the people in the market would trade on, who had no intention of using these products would trade on to get a profit causing an artificial price hike which does not really necessarily represent the market value of this product so this price hike would attract the unsuspecting investors or users  from the market would see this as a good sign and would consider that development as a lucrative investment or a right place to build a home in the future.  These small investors or end users are not involved in the whole process and want to invest so what happens is that once these mega investors on the top that work closely with the developers pull out from these projects the prices of those projects or those sectors of those projects drop representing the actuall market value. These mega investors have had those files only can pull out once they have transferred those files with an artificial price hike to unseuspecting small investors and end users. Once they have successfully moved these files to a lower segment of the market they move to the next project that is upcoming. When this happens the trading stops, prices drop,  it’s usually these end users who bear the burden who have these files and are now left with an asset that is now worth less than they bought it for.

 So this was my basic motivation and when I sought for solutions I was surprised to know that the way that Shariah allows transaction in this industry is considerably safe and secure for both parties so for example that the shariah compliant way of dealing in this industry is that you only trade in files that have identified where exactly the piece of land is of the files that you are buying and it’s not an open file so that way people exactly know which product they’re buying, the specific land and what is the price of those products.

 Secondly when a society is handing out open files without the identification or specification of exactly where the piece of land exists, the society is in a position of handing out more files(plots) that it actually possess and when the society fails to acquire that extra land it has sold in the form of open fies, the clients are stuck with open files for decades 

So how we solve this problem is that by doing our research and getting those products where the developers are only selling what they possess because in shariah compliant transaction one can only sell to a customer what they already possess and not the other way around where you sell something, as most societies are doing in the forms of open files and then going out and trying to acquire those pieces of land that they have sold to you in the form of files and then doing development on them. we have seen many renowned societies not being able to acuire those pieces of land later on and those people stuck with these files for decades. it’s still happening around today, so what we’re doing is that we’re doing our own research looking into the product. Our  council religious scolars that are expert on this mater guides us on the compliance with sharia in our dealings. According to them  we we only sell those products where when the developers actually possess what they are handing out.  So we we we only sell plots which are identified on the land. this all also restricts the developers from from selling more pieces of land than they possess most pieces of plot than they possess because when they are handing over, they are letting the client know exactly where it exists on the map on the land 

So I consulted with a lot of our religious scholars who guided us through this process to come up with a product and set off dealings that we should do which are compliant and as we all know that sharia protects a lot of things I’m sure you’re into your complying dealings there’s protection there’s a underlying statement where both parties are protected the same way as in a conventional banking system where you go and try to buy a car that will give you a loan that loan is based on some other collateral and basically what happens is that and there’s interest payment on those loans and once you For example that car is stolen or it has an accident that liabilities on you not the bank and from the same way when we’ve done what should be a compliant way of giving car loans which is known as car ijarah the bank does partnership with with the client and is a is liable for his part of ownership of the car so that way the diffusion  of responsibility and both parties bear the loss, So the brand that we are launching is called Amanah with the sole intention of of protecting the clients with shiriah compliant trading so when a client comes to us we try to enforce those set of rules set by our council on compliance.

 The other set of motivation that I had for launching this brand was because of the climate change that is happening globally around us and we have lately started seeing the effects of this climate change as Pakistan is on the forefront of these effects and we can see it clearly now  in our weather in our air quality, the quality index in  Lahore especially is being the world’s most polluted city recently and myself  being the resident of Islamabad, born and raised here, I have seen the deterioration of the air quality of the city where we are all breathing in toxins and and one of the reasons of this as this mushroom growth of the cities where with these devlopments,  ecosystems are being destroyed, the developers are not conscious of what they are doing to the environment and cutting down trees and changing the topography of the land. What we intend to do from Amanda is that we are working on establishing partnerships with the government where they will help us with identification  of of the the lab land and we will funnel from a portion of the profits from our dealings or trading. we will for each trade that we do we will plant a certain amount of trees in the form of Maywwaki forest. considerably the most effective technique in fighting these climate changes. With this what we hope to do Is that to by removing the negative externality this particular industry produces and  trying  to mitigate or limit the effect of those negative externalities is by planting these forests in the different pockets of the city