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An IT start-up in the conflict zone of Kashmir

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DQW Bureau
New Update





It needs not just courage and a brave

heart, but immense confidence and commitment to give up hefty pays

and cozy life working abroad and take up the challenges to start a

tech firm, not in Bangalore but in the conflict zone of Srinagar,

Jammu and Kashmir.  It was in 2004, when Fayaz Bhat, Amin Bhat

and Tahir Kazi—three techie friends—took a bold decision to leave

their jobs abroad and returned back to pursue their aspirations to do

something worthy for locals in this state, the land once called by

Jawahar Lal Nehru as the heaven on earth.  “We three friends

came together and co-founded Musky Software Solution (MSS) in

December 2004 with the initial investments of Rs five lakh. Our

concept was that we all belonged to J&K, so wanted to give back

to the place where we were born,” says Fayaz Bhat. Looking

at the turbulent socio-political situation in J&K over the past

three decades due to constant terrorist activities, security issues,

curfews and so on, setting up an IT business will not be considered a

wise decision. “Yes, we were aware of the problems here but were

enough confident to meet those challenges and determined to give a

chance to the locals with our positive thinking,” added Fayaz

Bhat. Because of the uncertain situations,

Bhat takes extra care and safety of his staffs. He has created a

residential and kitchen area where the staffs prepare food and stay

overnight during curfews. According to Fayaz Bhat, the state

has some eight to 10 engineering colleges, institutes and

universities, so every year a big number of tech graduates pass out

from the state. “So getting IT staffs here is not a major issue but

getting work or projects regularly is the key problem for companies

like ours,” explained Bhat.





Initially, it was the support

and references of friends based abroad that offered IT projects, back

office work, software development and support type of jobs to MSS.

Owing to the difficulty in getting a smooth flow of work, they

decided to have five business lines rather than having just one

specialized sector, in order to keep the business sustained. “Our

business include software development, flash product development,

banking services, IT staffing and recruitment and IT consultancy,”

said Bhat. Apart from the socio-political situations, the

start-up also faces issues like regular power-cuts, inconsistent and

low Internet connectivity, lack of business locations along with

non-availability of evening flights, which hampers client visits and

meetings.





Despite the challenges and problems, today MSS is a

six-year-old firm with 30 staff members, two offices in Srinagar and

Jammu and they are furthur planning a third one in Bangalore in the

next fiscal. “Though our client base is small, most of them

are from the US, Africa and other countries. On an average we are

able to add a couple of clients every year and growing at 50 percent

annually. Last year we posted revenue of over Rs one crore,”

claimed Bhat. Currently, MSS has 10 clients from verticals such as

banking, healthcare, e-commerce, exports along with software

companies for outsourcing work. According to Bhat, there are some 45

plus small and mid-size IT firms providing various IT support and

services such as data entry, web designing, back-office outsourcing

and software developments.


 But in the absence of a state IT

policy or vision, he reckons that the prospects of utilizing IT

resources and boosting small IT firms here highly depends on big IT

enterprises such as Infosys, HCL, Wipro and TCS. “If these

big companies can share or outsource even 0.5 percent of their

non-critical work or back-office jobs to firms in J&K, then it

will not only boost the IT sector but will also create big job

opportunities for the locals,” quoted Bhat. “If telecom

firms are operating and doing business in J&K, why can't the tech

companies follow the same and change their attitudes?” asked the

entrepreneur with a mission.




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