Mehvish Mushtaq

From HT Brunch, November 30 Even as you’re reading this, winds of change are blowing across India. From places as busy as Mumbai, as faraway as Erode and as troubled as Kashmir, great new ideas are sprouting, promising a better tomorrow, making us proud. Our nation of jugaad is taking a giant leap forward – inventing, adapting and creating bold new ways to make your everyday life easier. We scouted the length and breadth of the country to find the brightest innovations, and roped in author and entrepreneur Rashmi Bansal to pick the ones with the most promise. This is a list that is as diverse as it’s ingenious. They’ve already inspired us to dream big – in full-HD, actually! Now it’s your turn…

FEMINA WOMEN AWARDS 2014 MEHVISH MUSHTAQ “I don’t want to be a second someone, I want to be the first me.” So says 23-year-old Mehvish Mushtaq’s About.me page. A BE student in computer science, the driven tech geek is the creator of the Dial Kashmir Android app, a database of detailed information—addresses, phone numbers and email IDs—on essential services and relevant government departments like healthcare, education, transport and police, among others, in Kashmir. Mehvish, a Srinagar local, is the first Kashmiri to develop an Android app. It was her love of technology that drove her to take on a one-month course in application development, and her subsequent project of creating a database for the Valley. And with 10,000 plus downloads on Google Play, it appears that the app has been exceedingly popular with locals and tourists alike. Not content with developing Kashmir’s virtual yellow pages directory, Mehvish dreams about starting a software company for dynamic young Kashmir...

She is the first Kashmiri to develop an app and is now popularly known as the  'Android girl' Mehvish Mushtaq (23)  Founder of project Dial Kashmir   A . If there is paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here...said Amir Khusrow, Sufi musician, poet and scholar about Kashmir. Eons ago Kashmir conjured up images of beauty — Dal Lake, boat houses and snow capped mountains. But now, Kashmir has become synonymous with turmoil. That's why Mehvish Mushtaq is like a breath of fresh air. She is the first Kashmiri to develop an Android app — Dial Kashmir, which has become an almost mandatory application to have on one's smartphone in Kashmir that has a population of around five million. She says she created the app with an aim to facilitate communication processes within the Kashmiri society.

Abhishek Mande Bhot   Meet Mehvish Mushtaq, the first Kashmiri girl to develop an Android app dedicated to the state of Jammu & Kashmir. W hen she wanted to telephone a cousin's school some years ago, Mehvish Mushtaq was lost. The school's website was down. She didn't have a phone book handy and there weren't any directory services that could help her with it. After considerable search, that included calling up the cousin's classmates, she finally got the number. Then there were occasions when a hospital's number wasn't easy to come by. Each time a situation arose, she would scramble for information. Mehvish Mushtaq stays in Srinagar where information isn't easy to come by. Telephone numbers and contact details are available but they remain scattered online. So when as part of an online course on Android application development, Mehvish Mushtaq was required to create an app, she knew just what she wanted to make.

Kashmiri girl shortlisted for L’Oreal Paris Femina Women Awards SHAFAT FAROOQ SRINAGAR —   A Kashmiri girl who shot to fame in Kashmir Valley for developing an Android application, has been shortlisted for L’Oreal Paris Femina Women Awards 2014. The yearly awards are given to women for ‘remarkable’ achievements. Mehwish Mushtaq Hakaak, a resident of uptown Srinagar, was shortlisted in the ‘Online Influencer’ category.

Today we’re talking about a mobile project run by a young girl. She’s Mehvish Mushtaq, and the project is called  Dial Kashmir , an Android app that provides valuable info about Kashmir. The description on  Google Play  goes like this: “All the information about Kashmir is now just a touch away.” The project has been developed in Srinagar,  a city of over 1.2 million people located in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir , and provides a very important service to the whole Kashmir area, which counts around 5 million people. The promotion of Dial Kashmir is strongly focused on social media; the  Facebook page  is quite active, with posts about the app and about the beauty of Kashmir.

Meet Mehvish Mushtaq, The Young Kashmiri Girl Helping You ‘Dial Kashmir’ At The Touch Of A Button Kashmir is not usually present in our imaginations (or on our TV screens for that matter) for reasons other than militancy, bomb blasts, curfews, guerilla attacks, protests, firing on civilians, army crimes, so on and so forth (though occasionally the images of juicy red apples and snowy honey-moon spots makes it through!).