SRINAGAR, Jammu and Kashmir
In 2017, Sheikh Asif was doing exceptionally well for his client in London where he was on a one-year contract as a web developing and designing solutions expert. For a school dropout, working in London was an out-of-this-world experience. Then things went wrong.
Four months into his contract, his client’s web business dried up. Since his grocery store was booming as ever, he told Asif, now 29, that he could look for work and not worry about living expenses until the contract’s term expired.
Asif could barely communicate in English. He had never been out of Kashmir, had no formal qualifications, and knew no one in the megalopolis except the client, a fellow Kashmiri who was his employer in Kashmir. Also, he could not count on his family, which was financially broke after his father’s chronic illness and the devastation of the family home during a flood in 2014.
“I felt the world of my dreams falling apart. I was browsing the web all the time for some freelance work,” he told Anadolu.
“But I didn’t lose hope as Allah says if you want a step toward me I would walk ten,” he said.
While walking down the street one day, he heard a voice from behind him asking, “Are you a Kashmiri?” The speaker introduced himself as an immigrant with a degree in management who was now running a restaurant. He bought him lunch and coffee, offered him workspace, and, importantly, assured him that he could lean on him for any help until he found a foothold.
The stars appeared to have aligned perfectly for Asif. The restaurant owner introduced him to Hamza Saleem, who worked for Google, and asked him to create a logo and a website for a client after providing him with a work table in a corner of the family grocery store.
Asif would be paid only if the client liked the work.
The optimism and hard work paid off: he received the first London payment of £7,500, considering his highest monthly earning in Kashmir was 20,000 Indian rupees (approximately $250).
Asif returned home after the contract ended in 2018. By now, he was the CEO and founder of Thames Infotech, a digital marketing, website designing, and business management firm. Saleem looks after the overseas operations, the mainstay of the revenues.
Thames Infotech employs about 35 people, with only three Kashmiris working as freelancers. It has an annual turnover of about 25 million rupees (more than $300,000). He did not stop at merely developing his career.
Mission 10,000
Asif said he wished for other Kashmiri youth to pursue independent careers in information technology rather than squandering their lives in competition for coveted but scarce government jobs.
“I was distressed seeing talented youth with degrees in computer science doing drugs because of unemployment,” he said.
But to his dismay, in the first batch of 100 students in his free online class in late 2018, only three were Kashmiris, with the rest from northern Indian states. All 100 completed the certificate course.
The only costs a student incurs on his open-for-all courses in digital marketing, website design, and business management are a couple of hundred rupees if they ask for a printed copy of a certificate and the shipping charges.
“My mission is to start an IT revolution for fellow Kashmiris. I want people to know that they can earn money from a wide range of IT careers,” said Asif.
Neither language nor money should be a barrier to receiving IT education, he said, recalling how an institute in Srinagar turned down his request to pay his course fee in instalments. All other institutions denied him admission because the entry qualification was a class 12 pass.
“I always failed computer exams in my school because I didn’t understand the theory. I loved practicing. My family was on the verge of destitution, but still, my father bought me a laptop even after I dropped out of school,” he said.
His zeal has started attracting the local students more. Today, Kashmiris make up 70% of his classes.
From 2023, he has embarked on the “Mission 10,000” in which he intends to teach 10,000 students per year. So far, 1800 have registered.
Overall, Asif claimed to have trained nearly 5,000 people since 2018, with two girls, one from New Delhi and one from Kashmir, who have their own digital marketing business.
The unemployment rate in Kashmir is the highest in India. However, Asif believes that an IT education provides an opportunity to earn money through freelancing in a place where the private sector is underdeveloped and the government remains the single largest employer.
“I am happiest whenever the students apply for jobs and I have to reference their applications. I believe the future of IT lies in hybrid work. So youngsters have a lot of opportunities to earn money,” he said.
Asif is also developing a startup concept that, if realized, would translate into a platform for services ranging from food delivery to plumbing.
His three self-published books – Digitization in Business, Online Business Ideas, and Begin a Business – are all written as guides for those interested in starting their own ventures.
