Disappointed over the lack of Chip Design sector in Kashmir, electronics engineer Kashif Khan has embarked on himself to change the status quo. Ibrahim Wani meets the young entrepreneur.
Confident, impulsive and spontaneous Kashif Khan is an entrepreneur, a confident business man and a trendsetter. Added to this he is only 24 years old.
Head business development of Resolute, a company he co-founded along with a cousin, Kashif is a jack of many trades.
Hailing from Anantnag, he is an electronics and communications engineer. Kashif graduated from Model Institute of Engineering and technology MIET from Jammu in 2008. Instead of opting for the traditional career options he set out to make a world of his own.
Resolute, his company is engaged in consultancy services, skill up-gradation, capacity building, marketing and brand building.
“My aim is to help people implement their ideas and innovations and make them realise their potentials”, says Kashif.
Kashif, himself was always full of novel ideas and his innovative spirit received a boost when he visited BITS Pilani to attend Apogee-the annual engineering fest with his college. A seminar on chip design caught his interest. “New innovative projects in this domain caught my attention and I was introduced to a new world of opportunity”
Kashif prepared a project named universal automation system and entered the competition for the fest. His project was about control of all household appliances from a single integrated chip.
Consequently his project qualified for the national level competition. “Competition was tough and my competitors were from leading engineering colleges of the country including IITs”. Unfortunately Kashif was not able to bag the first prize.
However he received excellent feedback for his project. Buoyed on by the encouragement, Kashif headed to Mumbai to learn chip designing. “In Mumbai I enrolled for a Very Large Scale Integration design course”
The course taught him new and modern concepts in chip design. When kashif completed his training he headed back to his college to complete his engineering course. “I had standing offers from leading chip design companies in India but I wanted to contribute to my state”
In the same year he established the company along with a cousin Suhail M Khaki who is a software engineer based in Pune. “All the capital expenses where arranged by the two of us from our own pocket”.
“After the completion of my engineering degree I continued getting excellent offers from the industry”. A company even offered him a full fledged office to run their operations but he turned down the offer. “At this point of time I concentrated all my resources on the company”
Kashif also realised a bare fact, “there was no concept of modern chip design training in engineering colleges in the state”.
Resolute tied up with ACTEL – a leading US based chip design company which provides design support for electronic chips to big multinationals like Boeing aircrafts and prestigious government projects like the recent Chandrayaan mission to impart quality training for chip design in Kashmir.
Kashif then embarked on a mission to fulfil the void. “I approached engineering colleges and universities in Kashmir with an offer to start the course in their institutions”.
The work bore fruit and he was engaged by Islamic University based in Awantipora to start a training course. The response from the students was phenomenal. “Out of the 90 eligible students 70 signed up for the course”.
For this training programme Kashif has got expert faculty from outside the state to teach this technology to the young aspirants.
“India needs 3 lakh chip design engineers in the near future. We are trying to prepare Kashmiris for this opportunity”. The career prospects in chip design are phenomenal ranging from product engineers, CAD engineers to chip circuit and chip designers
Kashif plans on taking design education to all the engineering colleges of the state. “I have approached Kashmir University, SSM engineering college and NIT”. He has met with positive response and he expects to start the course soon in all these places.
Kashif also offers consultancy and marketing services to MNCs and companies. In 2008 he offered interactive marketing services to Laconic technologies-a Bangalore based software company which provides softwares for Pharma products.
This year the company has also released a CD about Kashmir, “A Digital Approach to Kashmir” which provides a complete detail about Kashmir. “We realised that there is a serious need to showcase Kashmir to the world and came up with the CD”. The response has been great and the CD has garnered a dedicated fan following on the social networking site Face-book.
Kashif also feels that there is a serious need to make use of new mediums for business promotion. “We want to make people aware about new platforms like internet advertising and social networking to make them realise their global business potential”. He is quick to suggest that businessmen and entrepreneurs should make use of internet sites like linkedin and Peerpower for product promotion.
Kashif is also coming up with a unique plan which he refers to as ‘GIP-Global Innovative Program’ in schools where-in, “we will inspire students to work early for grass roots level planning to help them succeed in a highly competitive world”.
Kashif believes that achievers always start early and face the pressures and initial hiccups to rise to the zenith. In his inspirational message to the budding entrepreneurs he says, “A bamboo tree grows only one feet in the first year and 12 feet in the next year”.
