Society

Wired To Hope

Entrepreneurs have brought opportunity to the Valley. There's no talk of leaving.

Advertisement

Wired To Hope
info_icon
B
info_icon
Clear-eyed: Kahkashan Majeed heads Vision Unlimited, an IT recruitment firm

Those resumes, they're confident, will continue to pile up: Kashmir has close to 2,500 highly skilled IT professionals—those with engineering, BCA or MCA degrees—and another 25,000 semi-skilled IT workers, who have undergone training with companies like CISCO, Microsoft, Sun. It's here that 32-year-old Kahkashan Majeed steps in. Her IT story began with an MCA programme at Jammu University. While studying she also set up her own software training company, Eureka Infotech. Although she had to wind that up after three years because of electricity and network problems, her business initiative stayed with her as she went on to work in Gurgaon with IBM Daksh, Convergys and then as a technical manager at Qubec India. She was struck by the number of fellow Kashmiris applying for similar jobs, but without proper training or support.

"Many people come from the Valley to try and find jobs in Delhi, but it can be a difficult experience," she says. " Apart from the expense, in this age of terrorism very few people are willing to rent out a place to stay to Kashmiris. I figured I could make the recruitment process much shorter and less painful by moving it to Kashmir. "

In 2005, she started her second business in Jammu, called Vision Unlimited, and within a few months had opened a branch in Srinagar as well. Since then she has managed to place more than a thousand recruits with firms like Convergys, Wipro, Dell, HDFC and Reliance. With an eight-person team in Jammu and a four-person team in Srinagar, Kahkashan finds that a significant part of her work is counselling rather than placement. "Most of the kids have no exposure and few opportunities," she explains. "They have little idea of what they can do, and the atmosphere here discourages initiative." She finds it irritating that there are fewer girls than boys, and that families often don't allow qualified girls to go out to get jobs. "I come from a middle-class family and went to a government school, and if I could change my own opportunities, I believe I can change the world." declares Kahkashan, with a steely determination that belies her soft-spoken manner. In a way she already has, since this is the first year that IT firms will be conducting campus recruitment at Kashmir University. Despite her role in placing them in companies outside the Valley, she hopes that at least some IT professionals will start ventures that they can bring back to Kashmir.

Advertisement

info_icon


Convinced: Jehangir Raina returned from London to start a KPO in the Valley

Kahkashan can take hope from people like Jehangir Raina, 35, who returned to Kashmir to set up his own kpo, iLocus, a nine-person team that sells market research analysis to industry giants like Microsoft, Nokia, Siemens and Alcatel. Sent to the UK to complete his schooling in 1989, he went on to study industrial research at the London School of Economics. Before long, he was doing market analysis on emerging information and communications technology trends for companies like British Telecom. After a couple of years he went freelance, and realised he could work from anywhere. In 2002, by when the security situation in the Valley had started improving, Jehangir managed to convince his parents that he could come back to start a company in Kashmir. "Despite the recent violence, the situation here really has improved beyond all recognition," maintains Jehangir. "In 2002 my car was stopped and checked once a day, then it came down to once a week, now it's once in six months."

Unfortunately, the infrastructure has not improved at the same rate. Jehangir has had to drop projects when his broadband connection has gone offline for up to six weeks. There is only one main BSNL optical cable running to the Valley, and every time there is a problem with it everybody is affected. "The slow pace of infrastructure growth is frustrating, but we keep hearing rumours of the next big expansion, so there's hope that things will move." Jehangir still makes a profit, so at least his plan has business sense. "I generate most of the revenue myself, and I could make more by cutting down on staff, but money on its own is nothing special. I am really investing in the future by creating this team."

He is far from alone in his venture, or in his desire to invest in the youth of Kashmir. It was exactly for this reason that Fayaz and Amin Bhat, together with two other friends based in the US, set up Musky Software Solutions in Rangreth. Fayaz left his job at Infosys to run the operations in Kashmir three years ago. They have expanded from four people to a 25-person organisation in Srinagar, and currently have a team working on location at Barclay's Bank in South Africa. "We provide world-class products, and we're happy to stand on our own two feet without expecting help from anybody," Fayaz declares. Instead, Musky would rather extend help to those in need. Amin's face lights up as he talks about the charity run that Musky conducted recently for CHINAR, an NGO that educates and rehabilitates Kashmiri orphans. "We had more than 600 people turn up, including the chairman of J&K Bank," Amin says. "It's the first time that a corporate house has given back to the community here, and that's an explicit part of our mandate."

The recent protest marches and rallies, during which one of the pick-up buses of the Airtel BPO was torched, has not dampened the enthusiasm of the growing IT crowd. The 35 IT companies operating in the Valley are now planning to form an IT Association to consolidate their efforts and generate more business. "I can set up a company in the UK or the US tomorrow and it would be much easier," laughs Jehangir, "but despite the challenges of violence and curfew and the current turmoil, our commitment to make a better Kashmir remains. I will never, ever contemplate leaving Kashmir again."

Advertisement

Tags

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement