For those taking the chair.
Inheriting a business is not the same as leading one. Each year Shafaat mentors a small number of people who are stepping into a family business or family office. Privately, and usually by introduction.
You are expected to lead, not only to own.
You have joined the family business or office, or you will soon. The people around you worked with your father or your mother for years. They are loyal, and they are watching.
You may want to build something of your own. You may want to bring in new sectors, new technology or new partners without putting at risk what the family built. And you may want someone outside the family to think with.
Shafaat started in his father's meetings as a child and later helped scale the family's manufacturing company before building his own. He knows this position well.
The real questions.
Earning the room
How to build standing with senior staff, advisors and the elder generation, on your own merit.
Your first bet
Backing or building something of your own, so you learn capital allocation with real stakes and a safe size.
Family and governance
Councils, boards and family rules, set up before they are needed rather than after a disagreement.
New sectors, same values
Venture, technology and AI: where they fit in a family portfolio, and where they do not.
Reading people
Founders, partners, advisors. Who to trust, how to test them and when to walk away.
“Vision is not about you or where you aim to reach. It is always about others, where you want to see them as you lead.”Shafaat R. Hashmi
No programme. No cohort.
This is one-to-one. The number of people he works with each year is small, so not every inquiry leads to a mentorship. Format and pace are agreed together in a first conversation.
Nothing is published and names are never shared.