Hasan Sarwar

The idea went from “interesting” to “annoying”.

That’s what caught Hasan Sarwar‘s attention.

And it became his “why” when he co-founded Peekabox.

At 24, he was in investment banking. Every evening he walked past shelves of fresh food being cleared out and binned while everyone talked about how expensive Dubai had become.

Peekabox is the UAE’s first surplus food marketplace: stores list their end-of-day surplus, and customers reserve it at a guaranteed 50-70% off. Over 1,000 stores across 50-plus brands have signed up, amid the reality of $3.5 billion in food waste in the UAE every year.

Building the company cost structure, hearing ‘no’ far more than ‘yes’, and dealing with the fear of looking foolish in front of backers were three challenges. “I worked through all the same way, by shrinking the horizon. Not ‘will this work’, but ‘what has to work this week’,” he says.

His brother Omair Sarwar left his banking role to join as COO and co-founder. “There is no version of this I am doing alone at 3am with someone I trust less,” he says, acknowledging Dr Sameer Al Ansari and mentors who supported the idea early, alongside their parents’ faith.

Backed by a $1.5 million seed round, the app hit number one on the App Store within days, followed by 80,000 downloads in six weeks.

“When a franchise said yes, it became a business that people were betting on,” he says.

What actually hit home was smaller: a queue of strangers in a partner store collecting boxes, or a screenshot from someone he’d never met showing what they picked up for 15 dirhams to feed a family.

Banking measured his own output. Running his company meant measuring everyone else’s. “I had to stop being the analyst in the room and become the person who makes the room work,” he says.

Before, he was defined by an institution. “Hasan from Jefferies. That comes with credibility you did not personally build,” he says.

Now there is nowhere to hide behind a logo, but it is far more real. Build in public, he says, and you become a node rather than an employee.

Raised in Dubai after his family moved from London, he studied PPE at Warwick, then returned. “Freedom is that every hour goes into something I chose and something I own,” he says.

Was it worth it? “Yes, without hesitation. Not because of the traction, but because I would rather find out than spend the next 30 years wondering. And if it had failed, I think I would still say the same thing.”