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Gap Finders: Shiza Shahid & Amir Tehrani from Our Place

With its domed lid, bright colours and promise of replacing eight pans with one, the Always Pan has become a cult sensation on social media. We meet its inventors to find out why.

Shiza Shahid was born in Islamabad and grew up in a home with only two pans to cook with. She spent her teenage years volunteering on projects helping children whose mothers were in prison and supporting victims of the devastating 2005 earthquake in Pakistan.

At 18, she won a scholarship to study international relations at Stanford University in California. Not long after she moved thousands of miles away from home, the Pakistani Taliban were violently reasserting themselves. Girls’ schools were bombed then banned. This compelled Shiza to return to support victims of this destruction through a series of summer camps. It was in these that she began a friendship with a young Malala Yousafzai.

Having secured what seemed like a dream job as a business analyst at McKinsey & Company in Dubai, Shiza quit that to run the Malala Fund at the request of the young activist to support girls' education around the world.

Fast forward to 2017. Shiza along with her husband, Amir Tehrani formed Our Place and started work on developing what would became their Always Pan. It's built a massive cult following online, sold over a million products, gained celebrity endorsements from US TV and film royalty and put 150 staff on its payroll.

Characterised by its bright colours, and tall dome, it’s sold as a replacement for eight separate pans. Big enough to cook a whole chicken but perfectly suitable to flip an egg they say.

We meet Shiza and Amir to find out more about the gaps in the kitchenware market they spotted and filled. We explore the links to their previous work and the challenges of competing in a crowded marketplace filled with celebrity chefs.

Presenter: Winifred Robinson
Producer: Julian Paszkiewicz

Available now

53 minutes

Broadcast

  • Thu 8 Jun 2023 12:04

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