Our Story

Hi, I am Rehab Iftikhar, the founder of AL-Afraah. Before AL-Afraah was ever a business, I was a housewife with young kids, at a point in life where I badly wanted to build something of my own but simply couldn’t. My husband had his own work to run, and I had a home full of children who needed me more than anything else did.

I’d studied Engineering, then did my MBA, hoping it would eventually lead somewhere. But between raising my kids and keeping the house together, that “somewhere” kept getting pushed further away. I told myself I was fine with it, but underneath, I felt careerless and low more often than I admitted — the kind of quiet frustration a lot of women go through at that stage and rarely talk about. By the time I had my fifth child, most of my days were spent scrolling for clothes, shoes and bags online, just like many of us do with our time.

AL-Afraah didn’t start as a business. It started as achar made at home, the way we always had, just for our own family. I never measured anything for the market — pure mustard oil, real spices, proper sun-drying, and enough patience to let it mature the right way. It was simply how we made achar, and how we’d always want to eat it.

Somewhere along the way, friends who tasted it started asking if they could have some of their own for the season. At first it was just one request, then another. It wasn’t something we’d planned for.

It was my husband who noticed what was actually happening — that the demand kept growing, and that there was a real gap in the market for achar that was still made the traditional, homemade way. Everything sold around us seemed to cut corners somewhere: vinegar-mixed achars instead of proper preservation, shortcuts instead of time. He saw what I hadn’t quite seen yet, so by Allah’s will and that idea of his — paired with ten years of consistent effort on my part — a family recipe turned into AL-Afraah, in 2017.

What started with a handful of jars for people we knew has, by Allah’s grace, grown into something families across Pakistan now turn to when they want real homemade achar instead of the commercial kind.

Nothing about the process changed once it became a business. Every jar is still made the same way — pure mustard oil, real spices, no vinegar, no shortcuts. AL-Afraah has always believed in bringing the same comfort to your table that it has always brought to mine.

That’s still the only standard we follow as a team in AL-Afraah — the one I’d want for my own family first.

That’s how I take AL-Afraah as a blessing to me too. Allah always has some better plans. I do all of this staying at home, alongside my kids, managing everything within my own comfort zone, in a space that has become largely female-run — and I couldn’t have asked for a better way to build something of my own.