Mehvish Mushtaq is the first Kashmiri woman to create an android app. It is called ‘Dial Kashmir’. It was created back in 2013 and was the first-ever app for Kashmir valley.

Amidst the chaos that takes place, Kashmiri women seem to be unseen. Hence, the story of this young entrepreneur feels like a whiff of fresh air, subsequent to all the bloodshed and political tensions.

Early life 

 Mehvish is the youngest member of her family of four. Her father is a retired Indian Forest Service officer and her mother is a housewife. She pursued B.E in Computer Science from SSM College of Engineering and Technology in the Pattan area of Baramulla district in north Kashmir.

Technology always fascinated Mehvish from a very young age. This is her love for ‘anything tech’ that inspired her dream to develop something that would help her native place. She had always wanted to contribute something to her motherland by staying right there. She has never wished to move out of Kashmir for any purpose, be it study or work.

 Birth of ‘Dial Kashmir’

 Mehvish acknowledged that finding contact details of an essential service had always been a tough task for people in Kashmir. She also shared an incident when once she had to call her cousin’s school for something important but couldn’t find contact details. She reckoned that everyone faced such problems in connecting to various services and that’s how the idea to develop the app occurred to her. 

 One day while surfing on Facebook, Mehvish came across an advertisement of a company that provided training for android app development. Being the tech lover that she is, She clicked on the link and took the short course in 2013. As a part of an important project of the course, all the students were required to develop an app independently. That’s how ‘Dial Kashmir’ was born. It took two weeks for Mehvish to develop the first version of the app. And this is when 23-year-old Mehvish became the first Kashmiri to develop an android app.

About the app

 The key purpose behind Dial Kashmir is information. Hence, the app consists of a directory feature that provides people with phone numbers, e-mail ids, and addresses of necessary as well as commercial services in Kashmir. It contains over 500 contacts of government. In addition to this, it also has other features like ‘Find Pin code’, ‘Railway timings’, ‘list of holidays’, ‘Muslim Prayer timings’, and much more. 

 She also intends to make the app much better and add new features to the app like watching movies, shows, and social networking. Mehvish herself is a music lover and a passionate Atif Aslam fan.

 App success

 Since its launch, the app has been downloaded more than 10,000 times from the Google Play Store and has a rating of 4.5, with over 1,500 reviews and ratings. A lot of people found it extremely beneficial in many ways. 

 Achievements 

Mehvish Mushtaq was awarded Femina Women's Awards (Online Influencer), Space Communications Award, ALL Grassroots Women Achievers Award in 2014 and The Sunday Standard Devi Awards Delhi in 2016. She received Nari Shakti Puraskar in 2018 from President Ramnath Kovind.