A Crippled Economy
The internet shutdown has all but wiped out fledgling start-up businesses in the Valley
The four-month-long internet shutdown and uncertainty in Kashmir has been almost a death blow for start-ups in the Valley. Take Tul Palav, an online apparel brand known for fine Kashmiri garments. Before the government pulled the plug on internet services on August
4 in the run-up to the abrogation of Article 370, the company was on tight deadlines ahead of Eid. The current internet shutdown has been the longest, surpassing the previous 133 days when Hizbul commander Burhan Wani was killed in July 2016.
Today, brand owner Iqra Ahmed is struggling to keep the company afloat. From the 30 big orders every month, the past four months saw only five orders on their social media page, says the 27-year-old. “I could not update samples of the new collection. Also, I could not communicate with my workers or family in the initial months when mobile phones were also not working,” she says. “My workers from outside J&K left.”
Till August 4, the Instagram page of Tul Palav (nearly 50,000 followers) was full of photos of ‘traditional wear with modern cuts’, including pherans, which are popular in winter among the diaspora as well. The venture used to get more than 10 orders a month from clients in the US and West Asia on Instagram alone.
Many entrepreneurs shifted to Delhi to keep ventures running but that is not helping either. Kashmir Box, a well-known online start-up known for selling products ranging from traditional Kashmir produce to handicrafts, has 30 staffers at its office in Srinagar’s Nawab Bazar. But the Valley’s first ecommerce firm, which at one point was delivering products to almost 30 countries, shows no sign of life now. “The internet was our life-blood, we can’t sustain ourselves without it,” says an employee. The company has an office in Delhi, but it is impossible to run operations from there as products have to come from Kashmir.
In the Gupkar Road neighbourhood in Srinagar, entrepreneur Saqib Mir is sitting in his rented office on a rainy December afternoon. The 32-year-old’s food venture, ‘Kolahai Waters’, launched in 2014, had quickly become a success. He had 300-odd staffers at one point but everything has stalled now. “We had an online service providing all material for marriages at one place,” says Mir. Burdened with Rs 70 lakh in bank loans, he has decided to wind up operations.
A Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) report has compiled losses from August 5 till December 3. It puts the losses at Rs 17,878 crore and almost 500,000 job cuts. KCCI president Sheikh Ashiq says the apprehension now is a surge in bank NPAs, with most young entrepreneurs on the verge of collapse. The Jammu and Kashmir Bank, the primary lender in the region, has recommended a moratorium on loans due to the shutdown, but there is no clarity about it yet. “Both bank and private borrowings are piling up. Entrepreneurs had got soft loans in the past, but they are all collapsing now,” says Sheikh.
The state government had rolled out a J&K Start-up Policy in 2018 to nurture 500 start-ups in a decade. The J&K Entrepreneurship Development Institute was key in this, providing soft loans under different schemes. Established in the late 1990s, it has trained over 29,000 youth and helped set up close to 14,500 ventures in food processing, floriculture, textiles, apparel, horticulture, poultry farms etc.
Institute director Tufail Mattoo admits entrepreneurs have been affected, but calls it a “temporary phase”. “They will get over it. During monthly reviews, we have learnt that things are picking up again. Also, we have provided net facility here,” he says.
A bitter Saqib Mir says it’s all just a front to get publicity. “They set us up to see us collapse. Only an idiot will invest here now,” he says. ■