Hailing from Lower Mundah – last village of Kashmir division, just few kilometres ahead of Jawahar Tunnel on Srinagar-Jammu Highway in Anantnag district, Ishfaq had no business background. His father worked as a tailor and mother is a housewife.
This 28-year-old in four years time has created a manufacturing unit of GI nipples with around Rs 9 crore yearly turnover and has added another assembly line of CP fittings with additional turnover of Rs 6 crore – Rs 7 crore under the brand name of Prime providing employment to more than 50 people at present.
However, to reach that stage of a successful business, Ishfaq had to go through long struggle. Like any other Kashmiri youth, Ishfaq after completing his education started to look for a job, with first preference to the government employment.
“After completing my MBA, he started looking for jobs in private as well as public sector. After sometime he realized that getting a government job is not that easy. So instead of working for someone else in private sector he decided to work for himself.
Ishfaq says that his visit to JKEDI proved fruitful and he got an insight about how to pursue his dream project and also a way out for the much needed initial capital to start with.
With the support of his family and research of almost seven months, visits to different units outside the state, Ishfaq was confident enough to pursue his dream of becoming an entrepreneur. He finally decided to set up a GI nipples manufacturing unit in his native district.
Ishfaq enrolled for three-week entrepreneurship development program at JKEDI to learn the business basics. After completion of training a project worth Rs 22 lakh was sanctioned under Seed Capital Fund Scheme (SCFS) to help him lay the foundation of M/S Prime Steel Works at his native village Lower Mundah in Doru, Anantnag. Though his unit required higher amount of money to start yielding results in the form of production.
With all the hard work and passion Ishfaq has been able to create name for himself in the area and today Prime Steel Works is a well-known income generating unit spread over an area of about 7200 feet in a two-storey building with separate living facilities for the workers. Manufacturing 15,000 pieces of the GI nipples a day, his unit has the highest production across North India in the segment.
With manufacturing Ishfaq has added another business element to Prime Steel Works in the form of an assembly line of CP fittings, which includes a number of bathroom fitting items under the Prime brand. In this line he out sources the manufacturing part to different manufacturing units and then assembles them at his own factory. Ishfaq says Prime is the first company in Kashmir in CP fitting manufacturing and assembly.
Ishfaq says Kashmir has huge potential for manufacturing as it is a consumer driven economy and imports almost every thing from outside. He says all his production is consumed in Kashmir and he is not able to fulfil all the market demand, despite producing 15,000 units a day.
Ishfaq says that his success mantra was the production of quality product with less profit and bulk production. “You won’t find any hardware shop in Kashmir, were you won’t find my product,” he says with a smile on his face.
Ishfaq’s message to the youth is that they should not look after government jobs, rather working on creating something of their own. He says manufacturing in Kashmir has tremendous potential and says instead of venturing into trade, youth should go into production.
“I am not saying that we should be in competition with the Suzuki and Tata but there are hundreds of small items which we can manufacture in Kashmir or at least assemble here,” he says.
