By Dr. Fayaz Mohammad

Let me ask you something.

Name one startup from Kashmir that a person in Delhi uses. One app on someone’s phone in Mumbai that was built here. One company from this valley that earned a place on a national business page for what it built, rather than for showing up at a government event.

That silence is the story of JKEDI.

The Jammu and Kashmir Entrepreneurship Development Institute was founded in 1997. It began actual operations in 2004. The startup push started in 2018. Six years later, that policy was silently buried and replaced with a new one. 

Public audits are missing, honest accounting is scarce, and the most basic question any institution must answer remains unresolved: what did you actually produce?

The government is spending ₹39.60 crore to pursue a target of 2,000 startups and provide seed funding to 25 ventures a year, a figure the policy itself labels “manageable.” Even so, officials have already extended the application deadline twice as they work to attract more applicants.

That tells you something.

Jammu and Kashmir has 855 registered startups. The figure is celebrated in press releases, showcased at events and cited as proof that the ecosystem is flourishing.

A registration, however, is only a starting point. Companies are built through customers, revenue, products and growth.

Ask a harder question: how many of those 855 startups have built a product used by a million people? Which one attracted substantial private investment because investors believed in the business, rather than because a government grant was available? Which founder from Kashmir gets a call from investors in Bangalore or Mumbai seeking insight into this market?

The answers expose the gap between what is being counted and what is actually being built.

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