Beyond the Entrepreneur: Aneeqa Khan

Name: Aneeqa Khan

Company: eporta.com

Written by: Angeliki Kotsidou

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The numbers:  eporta.com brings together trade buyers with high-quality furniture and home furnishing suppliers in an exclusively B2B marketplace. The platform enables them to communicate directly with each other, source products more efficiently and streamline their business process. The firm boasts more than 1,000 sellers in 55 countries and over 10,000 buyers in 85 countries using eporta.com.

How did she do it? Born and raised in Manchester, Khan began her career in Private Equity Investment soon after graduating from the University of Oxford, where she achieved a Master’s degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Her lightbulb moment came when she was starting out in property. “I bought a flat in Brixton and was basically struggling to find furniture for it. I realised that the reason I was finding it so difficult wasn’t because there aren’t great pieces out there. It’s actually because it’s really hard for people to find those great pieces or for the people who make the pieces to find trade buyers. So I decided to solve that problem.”

Just like that? A self-proclaimed challenge-seeker, Aneeqa was hired at the age of 21 by English financier and Terra Firma Capital Partners founder Guy Hands, making her the firm’s youngest hire in its history (Hands was subsequently an investor in eporta.com). At 26, she was leading strategy for Zoopla, the UK’s top property search website, a role which had a significant influence on her. She happily admits: “I learnt how technology can really move an idea to something that impacts millions of people; eporta draws on this experience.”

Best quote: “I often get asked if it’s been challenging setting up a business as a young woman. The reality is that starting a business is full of challenges, and, while being a woman may have contributed to some, I’ve never felt like anything wasn’t possible or available to me, and I hope that my story will inspire others to feel the same way.”

 

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