“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by“
The road not taken / Robert Frost.
Sheikh Asif’s decision to drop school and pursue his dreams reminds me of Robert Frost’s ‘The Road not taken’ which focuses on making wise decisions in life.
‘The Road Not Taken’ by Frost is a poem that describes the unforeseen circumstances a person has to go through at some point in time and the dilemma of a person standing on a road with diversion. By diversion, Frost symbolizes real-life situations. Driven by our hopes and ambitions, we make a decision that fewer people do and sometimes, even if we’re wise enough, life, the unpredictable of all, bring up situations that lead us to take tough decisions.
Sheikh Asif, with a mission to make Digital Kashmir have won many awards and has been nominated for the fourth highest civilian award Padma Shri 2022.
As a school dropout, Sheikh Asif who had an unpleasant journey in his first stages of life is now the CEO and owner of UK Based company, Thames Infotech. Being financially down, a student who dropped his school and learnt the skill working with some IT companies nearby for around six years, it was his excursion to the UK which made a huge difference for him.
“I got an opportunity to visit the UK in the year 2016, where I met a software engineer of Google Mr Hamzha Saleem who supports me to set up a website design company and today I am an author and CEO / Founder of a website design company situated in Manchester,” said Asif.
“Then I built a website KOSHURBUSINESS.COM which permits the local businesses to advance business on the website, liberated from cost,” he added.
Besides being a CEO / Founder of the Thames Infotech, Sheikh Asif is a professional web designer/ developer, graphics designer, digital marketer and author, has written two books namely ‘Digitization in Business’ and ‘Online Business’ Ideas which according to him, can prove beneficial to anyone in starting their business and improving an existing business.
Asif is mentoring hundreds of students to grab the digital opportunities at a time when everything is going digital. He has trained 800+ Students in digital marketing and website design by providing them, free online classes. Besides, being a digital marketing expert, he is helping small businesses to go online from all over the world and is now aiming to make all sorts of businesses online in his own region, Kashmir.
“During Pandemic when markets were closed, people called me to make their businesses online. I got calls from different cities of India, the UK and the US. In the meantime, I published my books that aim to help young budding entrepreneurs. Now I have started QNA sessions where peoples ask me questions and I publish their answers online or mail them the solutions”, Asif said.
“What I’m concerned about is that here we just have one IT professional for every 100 doctors. People think there is no scope in IT. But there is a lot of scope in it. I am giving lessons and teaching the youth about website designing and graphics which is free of any cost. Because I don’t want my region to fall behind in this particular field,” he added.