Anuscha Iqbal

About Beyond Cubicles

📢 #BeyondCubicles is a weekly LinkedIn series created by Carolina D’Souza, born out of her own experience transitioning from a corporate career to independent consulting. Since its launch in June 2024, the series has evolved into a platform that showcases the inspiring journeys of several founders who have redefined the traditional 9-to-5.

Through authentic narratives, #BeyondCubicles highlights themes of courage, resilience, and purpose. The stories feature individuals from diverse industries—ranging from tech and education to wellness and adventure—who share their experiences of stepping away from conventional roles to pursue passion-driven careers. 

✨ Note: All features in this series are unpaid and shared as a way to honor and amplify real stories of transformation.

“Don’t romanticize the jump. Romanticize the resilience,” says Anuscha Iqbal.

 

The leap, she says, is the easy part.

 

It’s the years after, the slow, unglamorous work of building through cycles you didn’t predict, that test you.

 

She had spent over a decade in private equity with a firm that went into liquidation, a forced pause that gave her room to consider what came next.

 

First, she co-founded Spotii in a Box in 2020, sold it, took it back, and merged it, becoming the first BNPL player licensed by the Saudi Central Bank. In 2025, she co-founded Qanooni, using AI not to replace lawyers’ judgment, but to take the friction out of their day. The name means “my law” in Arabic.

 

The combination of responsibility coupled with turbulence was the toughest to navigate for her. “It costs you certainty, which has an impact on your mental health, and it costs you time you don’t get back. There are moments where the business asks for more than feels fair to the people around you,” she says.

 

Her brother has been her co-founder through both companies. Her spouse has been a constant presence. “There’s trust in building alongside family, someone who’s in it with you not for the upside, but because they believe in you,” she says.

 

She grew with the business, acting before the answer existed, more patient with uncertainty and more decisive within it.

 

Her personal brand shifted too. “Before, I was ‘the person at the firm,’ defined by an institution,” she says. “Now I’m defined by what I’ve built and walked through. They used to see me as a capable operator inside a system. Now they see me as someone who can build the system itself.”

 

At home too, fulfillment is building something meaningful. When she launched her first business during the lockdown, her children watched it happen in real time.

 

“That’s the version of freedom I want: a life where the work and the family aren’t competing, they’re witnessing each other. Even today, the business is a topic at the dinner table with my children, and I love how vested they are.”

 

Originally from Pakistan, she studied in the US, worked in banking in New York, then moved to Dubai to be closer to family, and to be in a place that “was building something genuinely exciting”.