In 2012, I was thirteen years old and studying in Grade 8 in Srinagar. I had no business plan, no investors, and no particular reason to believe that anything I built would amount to much. But I had learned to code, and I had noticed that businesses in Kashmir were paying expensive middlemen for simple websites that I could build better, faster, and cheaper.
So I started. I charged what felt like a reasonable amount. I delivered what I promised. Word spread. More clients came.
Over the following years, the business evolved. Website development became digital marketing. Digital marketing became software. Software became infrastructure. Infrastructure became finance, aviation, retail, logistics. Each step felt natural at the time — a response to a gap I could see, a problem a client had, an opportunity the previous business made visible.
I did not decide to build a conglomerate. I decided, over and over again, to solve the next problem in front of me. The conglomerate was the result.
What I learned — and what I believe is true for anyone building in an emerging market — is that your geography is not your ceiling. It can be your edge. We built from Srinagar not in spite of being in a Tier-2 city, but partly because of it. The constraints forced creativity. The proximity to a market that needed solutions forced focus. The absence of a local startup ecosystem meant we had to build our own processes rather than copying someone else's.