26-year old Mudasir, a Srinagar based freelance web designer, felt like someone pulled a plug on his web designing passion which was his only source of income as the internet was banned by the government in Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019. Like Mudasir, many internet driven entrepreneurs – also called Netpreneurs – felt the same as their business took a body blow and continued suffering till 4G internet was restored on Friday after 18 months of ban.
The entrepreneurs who were trying to grow the Netpreneurship in Kashmir say although they lost two years and missed all the planned business targets, they still feel that with the ban lifted, there is a hope after all.
“Web designing is 100 percent internet driven, lack of internet access meant zero work and zero income. This work was not only my passion but it helped me to fund my studies and help my family. First up till early 2020 there was zero income, in addition to that all the assignments which were ongoing had to be stopped. Later on 2G it was nearly impossible to design websites which require high end online tools. There were lots of young clients who wanted me to make websites of their small business and were all set to go online. Most of these dreams were cut short due to internet curbs while many websites got defunct for the want of maintenance,” Mudasir said adding that now there is hope that things will be back as the biggest bottleneck that was created due to internet curbs has been removed.
In the past few years, Kashmiri youth have been exploring e-commerce by opening online shopping stores. Sheikh Usman, co-founder of a well known online books store known as ‘Lal-chowk’ told the Greater Kashmir that much was lost in the past two years as they could not cater properly to their consumer base due to the 4G ban. He is however hopeful now that things will workout better with full access to high-speed internet. He said that with access to high-speed internet granted, they will expand and hire back the staff that they had to lay off as the online business had hit rock-bottom.
“With no internet access, we had to take orders via phone when calling was restored by the end of 2019. This was despite investing a huge amount of money in apps and websites. Later 2G limited our working as we couldn’t work properly, neither could we do additions to our online services nor could we update our services as per plan. On low speed internet consumers don’t find it convenient to buy online which affected our business. There were issues with online payments and our digital marketing campaigns were hugely affected due to low speed internet. Now we are hopeful that the worst is over and internet driven businesses have a future,” Usman said .
These entrepreneurs say that the online businesses like online stores, social media driven stores, online logistic services, online food joints, clothing stores had earlier thrived in Kashmir. They said that with limited internet many of them stopped online operation and some even moved to other businesses.
“Many small businesses who had physical stores were trying to get online to expand their business but with no internet there was no hope. Many like me gave up the idea of doing Netpreneurship as there is always internet issue in Kashmir. If there will be uninterrupted access to the internet, the online business can compete on national and international level,” said Shahid, an entrepreneur from South Kashmir.
In Kashmir, with already limited sectors, the internet driven business had to put an extra money and workforce in place to make apps and websites which could be easily accessed via low speed internet. They said that still they couldn’t match the performance of their counterparts in other Indian states. These internet based entrepreneurs say that uninterrupted internet is vital for their business to thrive and hope they will get the same now.
Keeping in with the trend in rest of the world, the internet based businesses had grown in Kashmir but the ban on the internet left these businesses defunct while thousands of jobs were lost. After tiding over 2G internet with lots of losses and struggles to keep business afloat, the Kashmir’s Netpreneurs see 4G restoration as a hope.