Small Town Girl Making Big Things Happen Ft. Bushra Latif

This one is a conversation I sit down with Bushra Latif, a startup founder from Dera Ismail Khan who built Nani.pk, an e-commerce platform and parenting resource that is so much more than a store. We talk about being the first girl in her family to move to Lahore for a master’s degree, losing her father and taking charge of the household, and the stubborn heart it takes to build something of your own when the world expects you to stay small. It is a conversation about shining bright even when it makes other people uncomfortable.

Growing up as the square peg

Bushra grew up in Dera Ismail Khan, a small district in KPK, in what she describes as a proper feudal political family. The kind of family where girls cover their faces and early marriage is the norm. Her older sister married young. Bushra was different.

“I was always the odd one out in family and I just could not kind of like fit in,” she tells me. “I realized this time when you try to fit in and not accept yourself who you are, you cannot be successful in that kind of life.”

She was a reader. She was always surfing, always aware of what was happening in the world outside her small town. Even though life in Dera Ismail Khan was plain and simple, her mind was not. She wanted to do something big. She wanted a life worth living.

The move to Lahore and taking charge

Bushra was the first girl in her family to leave for higher education. She did her bachelor’s through Cambridge and then told her family she had to do her master’s from Lahore. She was headstrong, and she was a very good student. They realized she deserved it.

But the move came with heavy responsibility. Her father had passed away ten years earlier, and when she shifted to Lahore with her mother and younger sister, the weight of running the household fell on her shoulders. Her mother was in trauma and could not handle everything. Bushra became independent fast, managing the house, the servants, and making sure everything went smoothly while her brother was away studying.

“It was very difficult because there was a lot of trauma attached to it,” she says. “But moving to Lahore helped. There was a change of place that helps you.”

She credits her father, who was in the army before joining politics, for making his children confident and independent. After his death, all of them became very strong. Even her younger sister now knows exactly what she wants in life.

The stubborn heart behind Nani.pk

After her master’s in English literature, Bushra started a clothing line. She worked hard on it, prepared for a big launch, and then had to close it down because of a problem in the family. It broke her heart. But she is a stubborn person, and she does not give up.

She began studying the tech industry. She was not a tech savvy person at all, which she finds funny now. But she is an executioner. She learns by doing. She had plans to move to Ireland on a student visa, build a tech business there, and then Covid happened. Twice she applied, and twice everything shut down.

“I am a very impatient person,” she says. “I was like, life is happening, let’s just start now. Let’s just start in Pakistan.”

She looked around and saw her older sister, married early with three kids, completely consumed by motherhood. She saw mothers in small towns who had to send someone all the way to Lahore just to get quality baby products. She saw a gap. She saw an untapped market. And she saw an opportunity to promote Pakistani manufactured, export quality brands instead of importing from China.

“Why not give it to your own people?” She asks. “Let’s compete on quality.”

More than just e-commerce

Nani.pk started as an e-commerce platform for baby and children’s products, but Bushra’s vision was always more holistic. She understood the psychology of her target audience, the millennial parent who Googles everything, who wants to understand their child in a way previous generations did not.

“I could never relate to my mother,” she admits. “I always wanted parents to kind of understand their children.”

So Nani grew. They launched parenting courses created with psychologists, animated and accessible. They built a mother’s community chat booth where women can interact and support each other. They launched Nani Ki Kahaniya, bedtime stories that will eventually collaborate with Pakistani children’s writers. They created a character called Shagufta, a modern Nani who plays bridge, socializes, knows what is happening around her, and carries wisdom too.

“We want to cover that gap,” Bushra explains. “People move out, couples move out for work. They don’t have the support of elders in the family when becoming parents. We want to be that.”

It is a complete triangle for new parents: nurture them with guidance, connect them with community, and facilitate them with products. That is what Nani is about.

On shining bright and dimming your light

Toward the end of our conversation, we land on something that sits heavy with so many Desi women. The pressure to dim your light. The expectation to fit in, to not shine so bright, to just be average so that other people feel comfortable.

“It’s always expected of you to not shine so bright,” Bushra says. “Like fit in, gel in. Why are you doing this? Why can’t you follow the average?”

She talks about how criticism almost always comes from people who are behind you in life, never from those who are ahead. People who have built something understand the journey. They have had the same experiences. But when you grow and change, when you become a different person, it makes others uncomfortable. They tell you to be average because your outstandingness reminds them of what they have not done.

“The punishment of covered eyes is death,” she says, quoting a line she lives by. “That is death for you. You have to be courageous. You have to accept yourself. I am this, I am going to live like this.”

Why this conversation matters

Bushra’s story is not just about building a startup. It is about being the first. The first girl to leave. The first to say no to early marriage. The first to take charge when everything fell apart. She is from a small town in KPK, from a family where no girl had ever worked in an office, and she built a tech enabled business with a team of ten people. She learned everything on the job, through self study, through LinkedIn, through networking at a co-working space. She did not wait for permission. She just started.

If you have ever felt like the square peg in the round hole, like your dreams are too big for the people around you, this one is for you. You do not have to be average just to maintain peace. You do not have to dim your light so others can feel comfortable. As Bushra says, when your thinking becomes limitless, your life becomes limitless.