Mehvish Mushtaq
Quick Facts
Biography
Mehvish Mushtaq (born 1990) is a Kashmiri computer engineer from the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, who has the distinction of creating the first Android application (app) called "Dial Kashmir", in 2013, the first ever such app for the Kashmir valley, a kind of a "virtual Yellow Page".
Biography
Mehvish Mushtaq was born in Berzula suburb of Srinagar in 1990. Her father is a forest officer. Her early education was in the Presentation Convent School and the Mallinson Girls School in Srinagar. She did her graduation and obtained a Bachelor of Computer Science (BCS) degree from the SSM College of Engineering and Technology in Pattan, Baramulla in North Kashmir in Baramulla district. She also trained in January 2013 in an online training programme of Edureka.in, on design of an Android application.
She developed the app as part of the course . It was the first app for Kashmir and developed by a woman entrepreneur. The app provides detailed information such as addresses, phone numbers and email ids of several essential services and other Government and non-government organizations and individuals in Kashmir, and is easily accessible by people including tourists as it is free download. The app has 500 contacts under categories of "essential and commercial with sections such as education, fire services, gas agencies, government offices, hospitals, electronics, NGOs and so forth". It also provides information on "pincodes, railway timings, public holidays and prayer timings". It has been updated several times and gets about 4,000 downloads daily. Mushtaq described this app as "...an application that may be described as a virtual yellow pages directory."
In January 2016, Mehvish Mushtaq was one of the 15 Indian women, the youngest Kashmiri female entrepreneur, who was honoured with the "Devi Award" for innovative thinking.