Sheikh Asif, a young entrepreneur, has become a household name among the youth of Kashmir. Despite being a school dropout and experiencing numerous failures at work, Sheikh Asif did not surrender to his circumstances. Instead, he busied himself in creating opportunities instead of seeking out opportunities to succeed.
Journey from dropping school
Asif started his journey in 2009 when he dropped out of school due to financial imbalance. Then he started working for a travel agency at a merged salary of Rs 1500. He worked for many IT companies, telecom and DTH companies to achieve his goal of starting his own company.
He said, “I found my interest in computers when I watched Bill Gates’ interview on the BBC. I was just five years old at that time. I started dreaming of being a person like him.
While talking about his schooling, he said, “No one wants to leave studies, but when my mom sells copper utensils to buy me a pen, I decide to leave studies to help my family. He recalled one of the beautiful quotes which was written by Bill Gates. I failed in some subjects in the exam, but my friend passed in all. ” Now, he is an engineer at Microsoft, and I am the owner of Microsoft.”
In 2014, he left working for companies because his dream was to be a job provider, but due to unprecedented floods in the valley mashed his dreams once again. All his savings went into rejuvenating his destroyed house and goods.
He says after the 2014 flood, he started finding jobs from OLX and other job portals. He got a chance to work for a company as a graphics designer, which was based in London, but the owner’s brother was in Kashmir and was running a virtual office from his home.He worked for a year, and one more shutdown started in the valley. He said the owner’s brother, after the shutdown in Kashmir, moved to Delhi and called me to work from their Delhi office.
Asif stated that he moved to Delhi in 2016 and was given the opportunity to work from their London office after a few months. He worked for some months, but business didn’t show positive results.
He started searching for a part-time job in London and met with a Kashmiri guy who was the owner of a restaurant. He told him the full story about himself , and the guy helped Asif and gave him a space in his restaurant to start working. After a few months, Asif met with Hamzha Saleem, a tech-savvy person who was working for Google as a software engineer. He gave him an offer to create his business website, but on the condition that he would pay only if he liked the website. Asif had no choice at that time and accepted the project with Saleem’s terms and conditions.
Meanwhile, Asif began promoting his services on social media, but unfortunately, he was not getting any work. One day, a regular customer called the restaurant owner and told him about Asif. The owner told him everything about Asif and offered him a space where his father had started his business.
Asif said, “After getting the space for rent free, I started working from there.” After struggling for some months, I got my first client for logo design, and I was expecting some 40 to 50 pounds, but I was surprised when he paid me 500 pounds. After being impressed with the logo design, he offered me another job for website design with the same terms and conditions that he would pay me only if he liked the design. I started working on the same day and finished his website before the deadline, and for that he paid me 7000 pounds, which was a huge amount for me and an unexpected price for the work. I never looked back. I kept working. Saleem left his job at Google and started working with me.”
In 2018, Sheikh Asif founder and CEO of Thames Infotech came back to Kashmir, and Saleem shifted the office to Manchester and hired 32 employees there. Asif started an office in Kashmir and currently has five employees working with him.
Asif, with a mission to revolutionise the IT sector in India, started providing free classes for Digital Marketing, Graphics Design, and Web Design. He has trained 1000+ students till date , helped 50+ businesses in COVID to bring their businesses online, and has written three business related books, including “Digitization in Business,” “Online Business Idea,” and “Start a Business.” He believes that bringing businesses online not only saves businesses or livelihoods but will also accelerate the economy of the country.
Awards
Asif has bagged many awards including Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 by The Fireboxx Bangalore, Nominee of Padma Shri Awardee 2022 and Digital Marketing Expert by Google in 2018.
Asif said that while youth are in pursuit of government jobs and opportunities, they should alongside start freelancing with different companies to earn a living.
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Nayeem Ahmed is the founder of The Press Walla, a news website and e-magazine that features youth stories about entrepreneurship, business and more.
