For the last five years, 25-year-old Ifra Yousuf and her two sisters stitched garments at their home. As business and demand grew, the trio realised they needed to expand but required a separate manufacturing unit.
And in the volatile Kashmir Valley, Ifra and her sisters aren’t the only women taking to entrepreneurship. From the far-flung areas of north Kashmir to the violence-hit south, women are opening their own ventures with one simple goal: become self-dependent.
Jammu & Kashmir Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI) statistics show that they have promoted 1,013 women entrepreneurs under three schemes until March 31 this year in the Kashmir division. That is almost double the number of women entrepreneurs in 2016 when 571 women benefited from similar schemes.
Experts see Kashmiri women turning to entrepreneurship as a positive change. “It is the need of the hour. We are now seeing women coming forward and opening different units in different places. I am very hopeful that women will carry forward business in Kashmir in future,” says Dr Gazalla Amin, the first woman member of Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industries (KCCI)- the Valley’s old trade body.
Read more of this encouraging story in a report by Adil Akhzer published in The Indian Express... This newspaper gives such stories every Monday in their column 'Tracking Change'.
