I arrived in London at 17 and built my own door

At 17 I moved to London on my own

I grew up in Kuwait, where my parents worked. In September 2017, at 17, I moved to the UK alone to read physics at University College London, on the MSci in Theoretical Physics.

At 20 I co-wrote a textbook, and we presented it at CERN

Prof Mario Campanelli edited a textbook that six of us co-wrote with him: a full first-year mechanics text written from the student side of the desk. We worked on it from 2018 to 2020 and typeset it ourselves in LaTeX.

Classical Mechanics: A professor-student collaboration was published by the Institute of Physics in 2020. I was 20. On 4 November 2020 we presented it at the CERN Library's online book presentation, which CERN recorded. It was reviewed in Contemporary Physics the following year and is now prescribed reading at UCL.

The book taught me the thing I have used every working day since: how to make a hard argument legible to a reader who does not yet trust you.

I spent a summer modelling a moon

In the summer of 2021 I held a summer research studentship at UCL modelling Ganymede's magnetic field for the JUICE mission, in the Astrophysics Group under Prof Nicholas Achilleos.

I co-founded startups before I graduated

In my first year I co-founded 1-Step, pressure-sensitive footfall tiles, in a Kickstart London cohort, and at 18 I pitched it to a venture capitalist in person in London, my first investor pitch. The following year I was a co-founder of Kondense, a water-from-air concept, selected for Kickstart Global 2018/19. In 2019 Kondense was selected for the Mayor's Entrepreneurs competition and pitched at London City Hall, and was selected for the Santander Universities startup competition. Both ventures taught me what a plan has to prove to judges and investors.

In the summer of 2020 I worked as a physics and gameplay developer at UnifiQ Games, building magnetism, angular momentum and electricity into an educational sandbox game in Unreal Engine. In 2021 I led a team of four at UCL 180 Degrees Consulting, advising a multinational social-care charity. By the time I graduated, helping founders build plans that hold up was the thing I wanted to do.

I founded Avvale in April 2023

In April 2023 I was endorsed for the UK Start-up visa and founded Avvale Ltd. I joined UCL Hatchery, the university's startup incubator, the same month. In December 2024 I was endorsed a second time, for the Innovator Founder visa. The visa itself was granted in 2026.

An endorsement is not a visa. Nineteen months passed between the December 2024 endorsement and the visa, and I kept the company trading throughout. In 2025 I grew the team of analysts, designers and financial modellers Avvale works with. I also ran a pro bono pitch-deck clinic for a founders' community, reviewing dozens of decks.

Being assessed and passed twice by UK endorsing bodies is why I write visa business plans the way I do. I know what a strong plan has to show because I have had to show it myself.

2026: awards finalist and national television

In August 2026 Avvale was longlisted for the Global Innovator Awards, and in September it was shortlisted. It is a finalist in the UK SME Global Expansion category, and the ceremony is at The Dorchester on Park Lane in November.

In September I was interviewed in Islamabad on Rising Pakistan, the morning show on PTV Home, Pakistan's national broadcaster. The segment is on YouTube, from 33:57.