The 23-year-old Mohsin Bilal Shah started a social media page on Instagram “Adorable Faces of Kashmir (AFK)” a few years back to provide a platform where Valley artists could showcase their talent.
Soon the page was hit and he started getting requests by many to promote them on his page. Today the page has more than 40,000 followers only to prove how popular Mohsin’s talent hunt page has become in this little span of time.
Graduated in Hotel Management course from Nasikh (Mumbai) the AFK’s page admin claims that he has promoted and provided a platform to scores of singers, models, dancers, authors and other entrepreneurs.
Resident of Safa Kadal area of old town Srinagar, Mohsin recalls that it was actually in 2015 when he started a modeling Instagram page (Adorable Faces of Kashmir) and in a weeks’ time he started getting messages from many artists to promote them.
Unfortunately, three years later in 2018 his Instagram page AFK was disabled for unknown reasons.
According to the social influencer he had 49K followers at that time.
“I tried hard to retrieve the page, but I couldn’t,” Shah said.
However, the debacle did not deter him from making a fresh start. He again created another Instagram account with the same name next year in 2019.
Since then his newly formed page has again crossed the 40k followers mark.
“I have received overwhelming support from the people. Initially AFK was promoting models only. But then we started promoting singers, writers, calligraphy artists and other entrepreneurs also,” Mohsin said.
“My motive is to promote the local artists so that they can have a better platform to earn their livelihood.”
“People of J&K, especially our youth, have lots of talent. Unfortunately, they don’t get a platform to exhibit it. AFK is trying to fill that void,” Shah said.
Such is the popularity of AFK that now even international brands are approaching him for professional business.
“Recently an international brand ‘ZARA’ did their shooting in the Valley. For the shoot they contacted AFK to send a couple of models, which the latter did,” he said.
Shah said that many organizations and companies are approaching AFK for different requirements and they are fulfilling their demands for artists or something else with ease.
“We act as facilitators and provide them with the contact details and information of the respective artists.”
Besides, the AFK platform has been part of big events organized by different organizers like Muntaha Baba, Aynein Altaf.