Nakul Shivani/ New Delhi
23-year-old Umar Iqbal’s is a story that will inspire all social media content creators. Coming from the small town of Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir, he has shown the way to use social media effectively to not only earn money but also help transform people’s lives.
For most, Youtube channels and other social media pages are primarily to gain likes, views and subscribers. But not for this expressive youth from Kashmir.
Hailing from Saimoh village in Pulwama's Tral, Umar is a huge hit on social media today.
His drew people’s attention after he started posting motivational/poetry vlogs, particularly on his Instagram page.
There is a story behind his inspirational videos - story of a young man falling into depression.
Umar fell into depression after he lost his mother, a few years back. He chose social media to come out of it.
He has mastered the art of using social media effectively to come out of depression with the sole message ‘if he can do so, so can you.’
While in Bengaluru pursuing his Nursing degree, he created a Youtube channel called ‘The Umar.’ This transformed his life.
He used the channel to promote Kashmiri culture and language, at the time of COVID-19, and according to him managed to successfully 'come out' of depression.
He interacted with locals of Bengaluru on his channel talking to them about Kashmir’s language and culture. He also pushed them to speak in Kashmiri with him.
According to Umar, "there is a large number of YouTubers, who work hard to earn likes, views and subscribers, but I always tried to post unique content, which is worth it for the viewers."
Today, Umar has more than 72,000 subscribers on his Youtube channel, more than one lakh and fifty thousand likes on his Facebook page and more than two lakh followers on his Instagram page.
It was his transformation into a motivational speaker on Instagram that turned Umar Iqbal into 'The Umar'.
According to him the motive to post such videos is to inculcate a sense of positivity among people.
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"When I post a video on Instagram, I always focus on audiences rather than any other thing. This is what has made me famous," he says with a smile.
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