From One Vision to a National Group: The Entrepreneurial Journey of Zafar Choudhry
Just over twenty years ago, Zafar Choudhry made a bold choice. He left behind the certainty and security of his career, to build something of his own.
Today, Zafar’s Vision, Sentinel Group Security (SGS), is recognised as a top-60 UK security provider, supported by a growing technology ecosystem and still to this day, a proudly family-run business. But the Sentinel Group did not appear overnight and the journey was not an easy one. It is the product of two decades of entrepreneurial thinking, calculated risk-taking and a consistent belief that people, not just processes, sit at the heart of good security.
This is the story of how one founder’s drive and dedication shaped the Sentinel Group as it exists today.
The Leap: Choosing Purpose Over Comfort
When Zafar reflects on the early 2000s, he recognises that his decision to start SGS was not driven by personal gain or expansion. Instead, it came from a gap in the market he could clearly see and a clear vision on how to fill that space.
“The security industry felt very transactional at the time,” he explains. “Guards were often treated as numbers, and clients didn’t always get the consistency they expected.”
What Zafar saw in those early days, was an opportunity to build something more human, a business where trust was visible, accountability was personal, and officers felt genuine pride in their role. Like many founding stories, the beginning was a modest one, with a small team, led by Zafar’s vision, long hours and passionate support in almost every aspect of delivery. But even at this stage, the pattern that would define the Sentinel Group was already emerging. To build a structured solution, and invest for the long term.
Learning Fast: The London Hotel Years
In the beginning, SGS’s earliest work was securing some of London’s finest hotels, which proved to be an in-depth learning curve in operational excellence. Hotels, as Zafar often says, are unforgiving environments. Security must be firm yet discreet, visible yet unobtrusive, professional yet hospitable. It was the perfect testing ground for Zafar, his team and for the fledgling business which was determined to differentiate itself from the crowd.
“We were a very small team, and I was involved in almost everything, recruitment, training, site visits, even covering shifts,” Zafar recalls.
These early years with the business growing from strength to strength built more than just revenue. They built discipline, attention to detail and crucially, a steadily growing reputation within the industry. Working in hospitality taught SGS a lesson that still underpins its approach today. The best security presence is often the one that the clients barely notice.
Building Foundations: Quality Before Growth
One of Zafar’s strategic decisions was to pursue ISO 9001 within the company’s first year. For many businesses in such an early stage, this might have seemed premature, but, for Zafar, it was an essential component. From the outset, he understood that sustainable growth in the UK security sector would depend on credibility, governance and measurable quality.
This would be the right decision, as SGS achieved the certification within the year, positioning them as a serious provider in the market.
This also set a strong foundation for structured growth, and going forward, the achievement of SIA Approved Contractor Status came in 2007, marking another major step forward in formal recognition, while the membership of the BSIA in 2009 further strengthened the company’s industry standing. Each milestone followed the same entrepreneurial pattern.
- Identify what the market values
- Invest early in credibility
- Build for long-term trust
2010 also marked a key operational milestone with the establishment of the SGS National Operations and Training Centre in Loughton, creating a centralised command structure to support growing national contracts and an in-house training facility, Sentinel Academy, which delivers security, health and safety training programs designed to enhance employability and professional standards across the industry.
The Serial Entrepreneur Emerges
Around 2012, Zafar spotted something that many traditional guarding businesses had not yet fully grasped, which was an understanding that the future of security would be increasingly digital.
Operational inefficiencies, compliance pressures and workforce visibility challenges were becoming more complex across the industry. Rather than simply adapting existing processes, Zafar chose to build a technology solution from the ground up. This decision led to the creation of Sentinel Technologies and the development of MiSentinel, a cloud-based workforce management and vetting platform designed to meet British Standards. This was a defining moment in the SGS journey.
Many security companies use technology. Far fewer create it. The move demonstrated Zafar’s evolution from guarding entrepreneur to group builder and someone thinking in ecosystems rather than single services.
MiSentinel did more than streamline SGS operations. It laid the groundwork for what would become a broader Sentinel Group model which integrated services supported by proprietary technology.
Scaling with Purpose
As SGS expanded geographically and operationally, one thing remained deliberately unchanged, its family-run ethos.
“For me, family-run doesn’t mean informal, it means accountable,” Zafar says.
Maintaining that culture during growth required conscious effort. Systems became more sophisticated. Governance strengthened. Leadership layers developed. But the core philosophy stayed consistent throughout, the importance of developing long-term relationships over short-term wins.
In 2018, the National Operations Centre was relocated to Manchester Science Park, establishing a centrally positioned and scalable hub for both operations and technology. This move, alongside the development of a dedicated technology headquarters, reflected Sentinel’s evolution from a traditional guarding provider into a fully integrated security and technology group.
Then came another dimension: social impact.
The creation of the Sentinel Foundation formalised Zafar’s long-standing philanthropic outlook, focusing on tackling poverty and supporting disadvantaged communities locally and globally. For a serial entrepreneur, this progression makes sense. Once operational stability is achieved, impact becomes the next frontier.
Leadership in Uncertain Times
The COVID-19 pandemic tested the entire security sector. With demand patterns shifting overnight, workforce challenges intensified and many providers struggled to maintain stability. During this period, the creation of Skye Guarding reflected both commercial agility and industry responsibility. By supporting other security firms during an uncertain time, Sentinel demonstrated a collaborative approach that is still relatively rare in the sector. It was another example of Zafar’s wider-lens thinking, seeing not just the company in front of him, but the ecosystem around it.
People Still at the Centre
Despite two decades of growth, new divisions and advanced technology, Zafar remains consistent on one point. That frontline officers define the business. This belief is not just rhetorical, but embedded operationally.
From MiPeople to MiFamilyAlert, the group’s more recent innovations continue to focus on communication, welfare and workforce engagement. Technology, in Zafar’s model, is there to strengthen people, not distance leadership from them. That philosophy traces directly back to his early observations about dignity in security work.
“I wanted SGS to be a place where employees felt valued and supported, not just employed,” he says. Twenty years on, that remains one of the company’s clearest cultural anchors.
Looking Forward: The Next Chapter
Ask Zafar what he is proudest of, and the answer is characteristically grounded. Not size, not rankings, not even the group structure itself, but consistency. Building a national security and technology group while keeping the original values intact is, in many ways, the hardest entrepreneurial challenge of all.
The next chapter for Sentinel Group will almost certainly involve deeper technology integration, smarter workforce solutions and continued national growth. But if the past twenty years reveal anything, it is this. Zafar Choudhry does not build businesses for the short term. He builds platforms designed to evolve. And as SGS moves beyond its twentieth year, the entrepreneurial mindset that started with one clear belief, that security should be built on trust, continues to shape everything that comes next.
