Mir Muneeb- Owner, ‘The Other Side Café’.
The tourism & hospitality industry is among the largest growing sectors in the country. It has created the progressive need for more and more restaurants, hotels, theme parks and leisure & entertainment venues.
Meet Mir Muneeb from Kashmir, a BCA Graduate who comes from the Hospitality industry. This Kashmiri guy, at a young age of 26, has realized his dream of opening Kashmir’s one of its kind café, ‘The Other Side Café’.
Muneeb is a hard-working entrepreneur who possesses a passion for photography & is curious about travelling and exploring new places in both India and abroad. He holds his own interesting way of describing his entrepreneurial journey, which he calls as ‘Hand Theory’, where ‘Planning’, ‘Hard work’, ‘Dedication’, ‘Sacrifice’ and ‘Consistency’ are the fingers. “And Palm appears to be representing ‘Patience’, which encloses all the fingers together”, he opines.
Inspired by travel and tourism, he states “Kashmir is an exceptionally beautiful place with much potential trapped in the tourism market, which needs to be explored. “I think that restaurants and hotels here don’t meet the international standards, which even other Kashmiris also feel as they love traveling across places, enjoying and gaining experiences and are well aware of such standards which they find missing across places in Kashmir”. Inspired by his dream & learning from people’s experiences made him create ‘a one of its kind’ brand which has its high standards and distinctly represents Kashmir on an international platform as well.
Muneeb has had his share of struggles, as everything comes with a price; his success came with some sacrifices he had to make. One of them was leaving a prestigious government job against his family’s will. Coming from a family of doctors, it took them some time to sink in the news that Muneeb desires to choose an entirely different career path. Plus Kashmir, being a high conflict zone, made him think twice about moving out and establishing his business somewhere else. But he decided to stay and create something exemplary in Kashmir itself.
Reflecting other problems, the 30 years old entrepreneur confesses” I faced a setback during 2014 floods, when everything I had created was damaged. I also remember the complete shutdown of the state for 4 months in 2016 which lead to a huge loss for my business. Till date we face these types of unpredictable shutdowns on daily basis”.
Nonetheless, he says that he is in no mood to give up on his dreams for such things. Muneeb is happy that he is representing Kashmir in the field of Hospitality and Services sector. “I am passionate to achieve my goals and strive”, reflects his unique personality. “My ideology is not being the boss, rather being a leader to help my staff grow and excel”, Mir Muneeb smiles.
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