T2F: Making Space for Change

A very significant factor that ignites the fire of revolution is art and admirers of such art are born with a
dream to chariot cart of change never witnessed before. Sabeen Mahmud was born with such a fire in
her heart inspired by South Asian artists, poets and writers. When she read about the informal
gatherings of intellectual mindsets, she imagined herself creating a space accommodating similar
mindsets pursuing art and literature in any and every form.

Following this dream of Sabeen, Karachi witnessed the birth of T2F-The 2nd Floor (the first project of
PeaceNiche). It has been seven years since the humble beginnings of T2F as a social entrepreneurship
project committed to revitalize Karachi’s cultural landscape. She did this by bringing together people
from a variety of disciplines and providing them with an independent, safe space for creative expression
and open dialogue.

To date, T2F has to its credit over 600 events ranging from poetry readings, political debates, and film
screenings so on reaching out to the country’s musicians, artists, writers, film makers, scientists,
comedians and politicians. So much so that it has emerged to be the most worthwhile arts and cultural
center in the vibrant city of Karachi.

Journey of revolution has never been an easy affair and Sabeen witnessed obstinate rocks and pebbles
on her path. Be it financial instability or forced relocation, T2F has been through tougher challenges to its
survival. In all those times, Sabeen stood determined to face them all and her hard choices nonetheless
paid off well.

This case was written by Aisha Arif, Kanza Afzal, Maria Maniya, Maria Silat and Uswah Munawar, edited by Sapna
Kumari under the supervision of Dr Shahid Qureshi, Assistant Professor IBA & Program Director IBA Center for
Entrepreneurial Development to serve as a basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or
ineffective handling of an administrative situation. This material may not be quoted, photocopied or reproduced in any
form without the prior written consent of Institute of Business Administration Karachi, Pakistan

© 2014 Institute of Business Administration, Karachi

However, challenges are ever ready for the entrepreneur Sabeen who realizes that T2F demands an
expansion beyond the boundaries of Karachi. The brand has grown and gained immense respect and is
likely to be well-received in other cities too. Such a project though requires personal attention of Sabeen,
enthusiasm that she has, and a strong spirit that will keep the fire alive. Here is the new challenge faced:
How is Sabeen going to execute the potential expansion as a sole owner? If a nationwide expansion is
not viable, then what other options she has for growing her business? Alternatively, can she consider
entering into a partnership agreement such as a franchise to allow her to manage operations in other
cities?

Early Years:

Sabeen Mahmud, as a toddler, was told to clean her mess by her disciplining and risk-taking mother and
by the age of three, she was walking up the house ladder with a tray full of food. Then she roamed
around on a newly gifted cycle to serve her triggering curiosity. Soon enough, she fell in love with a
Macintosh Plus computer. It had a tiny 9-inch screen, an 8-MHz processor, 1 MB of RAM, and no hard
disk. Connecting the dots in reminiscence, she feels that Mac changed the itinerary of her life by building
her anti-establishment, anti-war and pro-freedom worldview. She eventually spent few years focusing
on programming and the essentials of graphic design. The world of technology secluded her from the
hustle and bustle of the world. Who needed people when one could depend on technology for spending
free time without any prospects of dejection?

Sabeen got admitted in to a top niche school claimed to be for the rich. Wearing branded clothes was
the norm there and anyone setting apart from this trend was looked down upon. Sabeen belonged to a
lower middle class family while her maternal grandfather was rich. Mehanaz always told her father not
to bring branded items for his grand-daughter as she was a patriot at heart. She would take her
daughter to local shops to buy her sweaters and lunch boxes. These were easily identified by the rich
bunch to be ‘the ordinary’. Witnessing such attitude on daily basis took Sabeen further away from the
world.

Soon enough, she moved to Lahore for college. Those days of 1990s were spent gallantly trying to drop
out. She found pretty much everything, however mundane, more energizing than the smothering
bounds of a classroom. This was augmented with the abhorrence for traditional education. She felt that
such training destroys the original creativity and innovation of a child and constrains the thinking of an

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individual’s mind. To let these feelings out, she wrote a lot of bad poetry and started getting involved in
protest movements. Whenever she returned to Karachi from Lahore, she would go to Solutions
Unlimited, an Apple Computer dealership where she learned how to solder wires, install hard drives,
and swap motherboards, in order to revive the intellectualism that the mundane education of her
college aimed to suppress.

After school, Sabeen used the following few years creating multimedia products. During the dotcom in
late 1990’s, with an unsettled feeling of empowerment, she would built websites by day and picketed by
night. Yet, by the mid-2000s, devoured by her attention to the military-industrial complex, she was
getting progressively anxious. Karachi faced lawlessness, disorder, "clean-up operations," and
fragmentation. She felt that individuals had gotten aloof and a feeling of sadness inundated the city.
The few friends she had made during the journey so far had all fluttered abroad for higher education
with the intent of finally settling there only. It was a discouraging time for her with negativity shedding
from all corners.

The Big Idea

Growing up hearing stories about once famous Pakistani teahouses and coffee shops where poets and
revolutionaries would gather, Sabeen always fantasized about creating a similar public space for free
speech and creative expression. She felt there was a need for such a platform because years of military
rule and terrible violence had suppressed original ideas and it was necessary to revive the community
spirit through a combined effort. But the creative revolutionists of that time were too distant and
ignorant of each other’s existence. Therefore to become agents of social change people needed to be
brought together to facilitate culture and social discourses. A venue where they could talk politics,
theater practitioners could rehearse, underground musicians could perform and emerging artists could
exhibit their work. It should serve as a safe haven for artists, musicians, writers, poets and activists. She
was certain that this would be a step towards building and cultivating a community of people driven by
the desire to be the change they wished to see. Thus she started wondering if it was possible to bring
them all under one roof.

She started sketching the place as she had imagined in her mind: a large open courtyard for theatre,
dance, spoken word and improve performances, readings, talks, and film screenings. All around the
courtyard would be smaller rooms for workshops and events, a bookshop, a coffeehouse, studios for
artists and designers, shops for artisans to showcase their work, and a bed and breakfast that would pull

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in some income to subsidize operations. Considering the amount of money in her bank account it didn’t
seem like her big plans for this public space would materialize. Her first clue should have been the cost
of land that was much more than she could afford but she was ambitious and believed her project
required all that she had imagined. She had this image in her mind and she felt that it could only be
created if each and every component was present.

She was advised by her elders to start small and work her way towards growing it into an ideal venture
that she was aiming for. At first she didn’t take it well but toward the end of 2006 she realized that this
was the way to go about it. Nonetheless it required money and despite being the COO and co-founder of
a well-respected technology/design company, Sabeen didn’t have the resources to finance this. Then
again she was influenced by people like her mother and her mentor, Zak, both of whom encouraged her
impulsive behavior so she ignored the bottlenecks and took a leap of faith.

She started looking for a place and realized she could use a 1,800 square feet area on the second floor of
a building located in a posh area of Karachi. She had narrowed down her long list of desirables to settle
for a combined café, bookshop, and a performance space. The space was finalized after an agreement
with the landlord and she was making progress on purchasing a coffee machine. In the days that
followed she set meetings with a carpenter, a book publisher and a mason and soon her project, later
known as T2F-The Second Floor, was in implementation phase without ever going through the initial
phase of developing a business plan. Sabeen didn’t even know how she was going to pay for all the
things she had ordered for her new venture.

Finding the Money and Resources

Sabeen’s idea was to create a social enterprise hence the objective was not that of profit maximization
for shareholders thereby eliminating the option of raising capital from investors. She didn’t have any
savings, land or jewelry to sell as her mother was also a part of a nonprofit organization, and with no
collateral or personal guarantee, she was certain that she wouldn’t qualify for a loan from a bank. The
only option left was her grandmother’s health fund that her maternal uncle had sent from London. It
seemed like a crazy idea to take this cash but her grandmother supported her decision and gave Sabeen
her blessings. This was just one of the many hurdles she faced as she struggled to get things in shape.

From registration of a nonprofit organization to designing the logo and branding guidelines, she gave her
best at every step because she was passionate about this venture. She read up on cafes, bookshops, art
galleries and event programming and tried to create a buzz about the project with the help of her

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friends and family who helped in spreading the message. Meanwhile she kept looking for cash,
sometimes asking family friends and uncles and even reaching out to other organizations that support
such initiatives. Her effort paid off when luckily one of the organizations considered her request and she
received US $10000 from Jeet Singh, son of the founder of South Asian Foundation namely Madanjeet
Singh.

Getting Started
And Sabeen’s dream finally took a head start with the birth of T2F-The Second Floor; named as such
because of its commencement in the second floor of a building in a posh area of Karachi. The Second
Floor represented a project of PeaceNiche that was a reflection of Sabeen’s fantasies. For a business
with as few financial resources as T2F, the founders spent quite a good amount of money on the look
and feel of the space. She stressed on the importance of having extraordinary paintings on the walls so
she convinced a young artist to do a mural for T2F. He had painted elaborate murals outside many
shrines and was excited to work for this project. The mural was ready just in time for the opening in mid-
May 2007 when T2F opened its doors to the public, more specifically to a few more people like Sabeen.
It was nothing like the happening launch parties of every other café opening at the corner of a street in
Defence, glorified with the presence of celebrities and the press. It was a quiet event that only like-
minded people had heard of through Sabeen’s networks. She didn’t follow the conventional methods of
market segmentation and identifying the target audience, nor did she conduct any research before
going ahead with her project; it was pure intuition.

For the first few months, Sabeen used to work for more than 12 hours a day, dealing with training staff,
working on graphic design tasks, writing, press interviews, event programming and managing
administrative chores. In the first few months T2F had its first open mic, hosted its first Urdu poetry
reading, screened its first film, held its first science talk and had its first press review. As these events
gained momentum a community began to develop and Sabeen learnt to believe in her idea.

Challenges
Sabeen wanted her social enterprise to be self-sufficient therefore they had revenue coming in from
many sources including the café, bookshop, merchandise and art sales. However, they maintained low
prices that led to a pressure on their earnings. All the funds she managed to get initially were spent on
capital expenses and in a couple of months she had also exceeded the limit on half a dozen credit cards
to finance operating expenses. The enterprise faced increasing expenses additionally burdened by

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installation of a generator to ensure uninterrupted electricity in a city facing severe incidents of power
outage. Aside from financial troubles, Sabeen could sense problems at home mostly because she was
overlooking some of the responsibilities outside of work while her relationship with her mother was also
severely challenged.

By 2009, T2F had managed to establish a reputation and started gaining popularity, even though making
profits was still a far-fetched idea for Sabeen. The place had successfully hosted over 150 events
featuring thought leaders, artists, poets, musicians, scientists, magicians, writers, philosophers, dancers,
actors, lawyers and activists, and thousands of people started pouring in to support the newer talents
and ideas.

Justifying a famous saying that sorrow follows joy, troubles started making their way to T2F. The first
one came in the form of a phone call from the landlord, asking to vacate the premises. In a state of
shock and confusion, Sabeen decided to break the news at a library event at T2F and received an
overwhelming response from people. The enthusiasts and supporters offered their houses, gardens,
offices and basements as temporary places to conduct T2F events. The immense encouragement
replaced the initial panic with a state of calm determination and optimism for Sabeen. A donation drive
was started by a student with a contribution of Rs. 5000 which marked the onset of journey to finding a
new location for T2F.

When it was time to vacate the place, Sabeen decided to seek contributions from the supporters of T2F
as funds were limited and that hour was an indication that the place could not survive on its own now.
PeaceNiche was already in debts and in those unfortunate times, Sabeen’s hope about the survival of
her dream had starting fading. Until one day, an email from a man who wanted to show some space had
come up in Sabeen’s inbox. She had no idea what the man expected as rent but when she visited the
place, it was a five story building under construction. The ground floor was a large open space that
Sabeen instantly fell in love with, and the place also had a first floor leading her to envision T2F spread
expansively over two floors. She knew that given the dire financial conditions of PeaceNiche, affording
the rent for this place would probably remain a dream until she asked the man about the rent.

His response left Sabeen dumbfounded and emotional, too stunned to speak and on the verge of tears
in gratitude. The man said that he expects the annual rent to be Rs. 12. Sabeen did not know the actual
purpose of the man who chose to be anonymous, but what she saw was a ray of sunshine, a hope to
bring T2F back to life again.

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On April 1st, 2009, T2F 1.0 was finally vacated and a new journey began for Sabeen.

The Chain of Hard Choices

Hence began another phase of her life. To start after the fall was not an easy ride. The other location
took time to be completely ready for use and it took almost a year before T2F was in operation again.
She was touched by the letters she received from people who were eagerly waiting for T2F to start again
but being unable to provide with a straight answer disturbed her. ‘When is it starting again?” was the
most dreadful question for her, as the situation was not in her control. There were the painters, masons,
air conditioner installers, plumbers, carpenters, electricians and many others involved, each of whom
moved with a different pace. Moreover the building they were moving into had not been granted
electrical connection delaying the already slow paced work. During that one year period the existing
employees were given their pays and a few others were also hired.

As the completion dragged on, she wrote a letter to the people telling them about the problems she is
facing in this relocation process. She told them the optimistic side of this shifting process was the two
floors granted to T2F by the landlord, hence events would be held on the ground floor saving the
musicians the effort of lugging equipments all the way up. Music and dance classes will also be held on
the ground floor while the coffee house will be upstairs along with offices and some extra space. In this
new building of T2F they will also have an extra room to rent out for meetings and a co-working studio
for those who need a quiet furnished space with free wifi to work.

Finally in December 2009 they moved in the new abode of dreams. Fending off financial, mental and
emotional crisis she felt completely exhausted. But the beauty of the new place made her feel it was all
worthwhile. The new place started with a little party for close friends and soon everyone was back to
work like nothing had ever happened.

By Mid 2010, she realized she could no longer go without a salary; she was working fifteen hours a day
for PeaceNiche’s various initiatives and continued to work at nights to earn money to pay bills.
Eventually there came a time when her vertigo got worse day by day and her doctor insisted her to
leave everything and take a break. She had a valid USA visa but no money for the ticket; therefore she
sold her iPad and added some money given by her mom. As she reached her friend’s place in New York,
she collapsed there and it took her three days to finally get out into the city. There she ended up at
house of Nick Denton, the owner of Gawker Media and met some talented, passionate people. Her
friend convinced her to ask for financial support for the valuable work she has created with immense

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efforts and along with him she worked out the yearly budget including a salary for her. Soon she was off
to Open Society Foundation and was successful at receiving an institutional grant from the foundation.
This help made it possible for her to hire a legal/taxes consultant and an accountant, and also to draw
salary for herself. The one year grant was stretched for two years as T2F generates 50% of its operating
budget through a variety of revenue streams. Having this money meant she could focus on things other
than finance. She then diverted her attention to innovation and programming. She tried to create fresh
experiences by playing around with things available. For instance, the bathroom door had a Faiz Ahmed
Faiz poem in Urdu rather than a toilet sign.

Most of the programming at T2F is based on the current affairs, on new discoveries and on the people
visiting our country. Some specific, recurring programs are also done. First Fridays: Open MicNight and
LitLab: Literary Open Mic provides platforms for emerging musicians, comedians, poets, and writers to
showcase their talent. The open mic hosts engage with the audience, encourage people to come up on
stage. Many people who performed at the open mics have also started their own bands with the people
they met at T2F.

Another one is the Philosophy 101 series; this introduces the works of great philosophers to lay
audiences attracting a diverse crowd that includes doctors as well as musicians. Then there is a science
ka adda series that pulls a similar mix of crowd sitting for hours in heated conversations. On Sunday
afternoons T2F is full of young children who are fascinated by the enactment of folk tales and
storytelling by a group called ToffeTv. Another aspect of their programming is the preservation of key
South Asian music traditions. This is an effort to keep alive our cultural heritage by giving a platform to
the renowned and upcoming artists.

A part of the quarterly programming is the Jumma Hafta Art Bazaar (JHAB); this is a platform for artists-
new or old, to display their work and to interact with others around. As well said by a little theater
group:

‘Artists like us are only good at what they do, so without the institutional support provided by forums
such as T2F, we would also end up as bitter doctors who never pursued their passion. Thanks to T2F,
we can keep on entertaining and hopefully pursue what we love! Thank you for everything!’

T2F also hosted and cosponsored Pakistan’s first Civic Hackathon. Over a weekend designers,
developers, data analysts and problem solvers gathered at T2F to find solutions for civic problem in
Pakistan, exhibiting the power of self-motivated doers who want to use their talent and skills instead of

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just complaining about the existing problems. Furthermore T2F offers a place for people interested in
debating, encouraging students from everywhere to participate and make debating more accessible.
Lastly it also provides a space for Open letters, a growing community of writers, who host workshops to
discuss their work.

Success and Way forward

Sabeen attributes T2F’s creative success to its open-door policy and open-mindedness of the people
who work there. One of the key elements in building T2F was to not restrict itself to a particular
specialty or discipline rather to attract people from a wide range of liberal arts, hence the hundreds of
events that have been hosted since its inception, range from poetry readings and film screenings, to
vibrant debates on critical issues and corner meetings for independent political candidates. This means
that T2F has been able to develop an all-inclusive clientele which is quite flexible.

There are over 23 permanent employees working for T2F for now along with numerous volunteers and
interns. There is a strong social media presence too with a large following, both local and international,
on networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. However, Sabeen is currently further investing in
improving the live streaming, podcasting and online sharing of the events to expand their reach.

Even though T2F has become the hub of intellectual and artistic activity in the city, much beyond what
the owner could have ever imagined when she started off, the enterprise still remains financially
unstable. Moreover, though she wants to really expand the business beyond Karachi, the nature of the
business is such that it requires her personal attention. She feels that she needs to be personally
available to the people who visit the place in order for the artistic and literary exchange that goes on to
be most effective. If she opens up branches elsewhere, it will not be possible for her to be available
everywhere. There have been some people who have approached her with franchising offers. This is
because despite the financially instability the T2F model is quite workable and replicable too. However,
she is still looking for someone who shares the same ideals as her. For Sabeen, it would be imperative
that T2F is led by someone who has similar values and ambitions as her. In her own words, “I have not
yet found anyone crazy enough!” Until then, she is focusing on expanding the clientele base in Karachi
only and increasing the online exposure of the events.

When asked how her overall experience in working as an entrepreneur has been at T2F, Sabeen said:

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“By creating this space, I have had the honor and privilege of meeting hundreds of talented individuals
who have renewed my faith in humanity. Many of them have become dear friends, coconspirators,
and advisors, and I look forward to continuing this shared journey of creativity, rabble-rousing, and
resistance.”

THINK TANK!

1. Do you suggest expansion of T2F considering its nature of the work? Why or why not?
2. Is there any difference between an NGO such as PeaceNiche and an enterprise? Is Sabeen
actually facing a dilemma of blurred boundaries between the two?
3. What can be the most significant ingredient in the success of T2F’s expansion? Discuss.
a) Financial Funds
b) Open-minded Culture
c) Start-up Idea

4.

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Page 11 of 12
 Sabeen Founder of T2F Mahmud

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