Ancestors Who Made Markets

Kashmir's business traditions once matched some of India's strongest families. Young entrepreneurs can revive that legacy with discipline and belief.

- Irshad Mushtaq

Kashmir’s old traders liked to say that a good business begins long before the first sale.

It begins with patience, with a certain way of seeing the world, with the type of confidence that grows when families work with their hands and build something that lasts.

In the old quarters of Srinagar, that belief shaped entire neighbourhoods. Merchants studied wool at dawn, ran karkhanas through the day and checked accounts by night.

Artisans leaned over looms for hours, gently pressing colour into threads that would travel far beyond the valley.

A visitor could walk from Zaina Kadal to Khanyar and feel that the place breathed through its workshops.

Elders who grew up in that landscape describe a simple truth: Kashmir once thought like a business powerhouse.

Families who dealt in Pashmina, carpets, walnut woodwork and papier-maché operated with the assurance of seasoned traders. They built export houses that survived on discipline rather than luck.

Anyone who has listened to their stories hears a pride that carries the weight of experience.

These families were early globalisers long before the word existed.

Many compare this drive to the Marwari business tradition of Rajasthan. Their story began in a desert where the land offered very little, pushing entire communities toward enterprise.

Generations learned to trust numbers, save carefully and take calculated risks. Children observed adults negotiate with the clarity of people who had no other safety net.

The world opened for them because they moved toward it, whether through railway towns a century ago or digital markets today.

Old Kashmir matched that ambition in its own way.