Srinagar: For many years, Manzoor Ahmed Allie, his brother and father would finish their dinner by 6 p.m. so that they could work throughout the night to make pencil blocks at their bandsaw mill.
It was mostly at nights, between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. that there would be uninterrupted power supply which enabled them run the machinery. Slow and steady, overcoming one challenge after the other, Manzoor scripted his success story like no other, bringing about winds of change in Pulwama district of South Kashmir. So much so that he got a shout out from none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself.
“Modi ji shared my success story for the first time during his Mann Ki Baat programme in 2020. Until then, making maximum profits in business was my sole aim. His words of appreciation changed my mindset and instead of profit, I work towards generating more job opportunities,” smiles Manzoor, speaking to Hyderabad Chronicle.
From humble beginnings, Manzoor now provides a livelihood to about 200 people, including women, in his Rs 1 crore enterprise. “I will soon be employing about 200 more,” says the owner of Jhelum Agro industries.
Born and brought up in Oukhoo village in Pulwama, once a hotbed of terrorism, Manzoor passed his Class 10 in 1996. With the family facing severe financial hardships, he decided to join his father as a timber loader at a local depot. His father would earn about Rs 150 a day and so would Manzoor.
A year later, Manzoor sold a piece of his ancestral land which fetched him Rs 75,000. “We procured a bandsaw and started making apple boxes out of poplar wood,” says the 46-year-old.
The poplar grows best in the valleys of Kashmir, he says. “The moisture content is ideal here and the weather conditions allow the wood to remain soft during the tree’s growth,” explains Manzoor, who is all set to introduce his sons to his expanding business. The turning point in his life came in 2010 when he happened to meet the owners of a pencil manufacturing company in Jammu.
“They were interested in buying pencil making blocks, made out of moist, soft wood of poplar trees,” recalls Manzoor. Without wasting time, Manzoor and his family started making pencil blocks and began supplying them to the company. The first consignment of blocks reached the company in Jammu in 2011. That was the beginning of his entrepreneurship. Within a matter of months, the demand for quality pencil blocks made by Manzoor began increasing.
“To meet the growing demand, I employed about 15 locals for the first time,” says ‘Manzoor pencil’ as he is popularly known. Next, there was an urgent need to procure modern machines and importantly, a generator. The determined businessman approached a local bank and obtained a loan of Rs 9 lakh. He bought a generator for Rs 3 lakh and the remaining amount was his working capital. There has been no looking back as his business grew by leaps and bounds. He began manufacturing pencil slates. “
We supply them to Hindustan pencils, makers of the popular pencil brands like Natraj and Apsara. The pencils are supplied all over the world,” Manzoor beams.
In October 2020, Manzoor’s success story was shared by PM Modi for the first time. “One of my friends called me to say that the PM had mentioned me. I was taken aback. In the days that followed, the demand for my products saw a massive surge,” he smiles. With the pat on the back from none other than the PM, Manzoor started focusing on providing employment opportunities instead of just making profits.
“Even the farmers are benefitting. They used to sell a tree for Rs 2,000 earlier, which has now gone up to Rs 5,000,” he says. In the last week of April this year, Manzoor was in for a bigger surprise when he received a call from the Prime Minister. “I informed him about my business and how it is doing well. I have assured him that I will be employing about 200 more people in my unit and I am working towards it. Providing employment to so many young people is a matter of pride for me,” he says.
