The Maker
Founder & Textile Expert
Aaqib Bhat
Third-Generation Kashmiri Textile Expert · Founder, Pashwrap
"I am not trying to build the biggest Pashmina brand. I am trying to build the most correct one."
Where This Began
Most people who enter the textile industry do so through business. Aaqib Bhat entered through inheritance — not of a company, but of a way of seeing.
His grandfather, Abdul Rashid Bhat, began manufacturing carpets and Pashmina in Kashmir in the 1960s. The craft was not a career choice — it was the fabric of family life. Growing up in Kashmir, Aaqib spent his childhood inside what he calls "facilities, not factories" — workshops where no electric machinery exists in the entire production process, where every transformation from raw fibre to finished shawl happens by human hand.
That early immersion gave him something no amount of industry research can replicate: the ability to understand Pashmina by touch, not by specification sheet. The difference between hand-spun and machine-spun yarn. The way authentic Pashmina falls against the skin versus the way a chemically softened substitute behaves. The sound a genuine weave makes under friction. These are not things you learn from a catalogue.
I have seen this fibre before it became a finished shawl. I have watched spinners work at the yindeer for hours to produce 100 grams of yarn. I have sat with Kani weavers in Srinagar who spend five months on a single shawl. When you grow up around something the world mislabels, you see the gap clearly. That gap became Pashwrap.
— Aaqib Bhat, Founder
Before founding Pashwrap, Aaqib worked as Country Manager for a Dubai-based consulting company — a career that sharpened his understanding of global markets, supply chain economics, and how brands are built and broken. But Kashmir was calling. The craft was calling. And what he saw when he looked at the global Pashmina market from the outside — the mislabelling, the dilution, the invisibility of the artisans — made the path forward clear.
Pashwrap was not started to build a brand. It was started to correct a distortion.
A Timeline of Heritage
The Foundation — Abdul Rashid Bhat
Aaqib's grandfather begins carpet and Pashmina manufacturing in Kashmir — establishing the family's direct relationships with weavers, spinners, and the raw material supply chain that Pashwrap draws on today.
Growing Up Inside the Craft
Aaqib grows up visiting Pashmina facilities across Kashmir — watching spinners at the yindeer, weavers at the khaddi, Naqash designers at their drawing tables. The education is tactile and direct, not academic.
Country Manager — Dubai-Based Consulting
Works in global business development and consulting, building expertise in international markets, supply chain economics, and brand strategy. The distance from Kashmir sharpens the clarity about what needs to be built when he returns.
Home Calling — The Decision
Recognising the scale of mislabelling, supply chain opacity, and artisan marginalisation in the global Pashmina market, Aaqib returns to Kashmir with a clear mandate: build a brand that corrects the distortion rather than contributing to it.
Founded — Kashmir
Pashwrap launches with a simple positioning: authentic Changthangi Pashmina, directly sourced, honestly represented. No blends. No machine processing. No inflated claims. Featured by Amazon and recognised internationally as a transparent source for genuine Kashmiri Pashmina.
The Knowledge Behind the Brand
Most people in the Pashmina industry sell a product. Aaqib understands the system behind it — from the altitude of the Changthangi goat's grazing ground to the economics of a global retail margin. That is not a common combination.
Fibre Science at Origin Level
Understands the measurable difference between 12–14 micron Changthangi undercoat and 18–21 micron commercial cashmere — not as a specification but as a physical reality observable in the hand, under SEM, and in the behaviour of the finished fabric.
Hand vs. Machine Processing
Can distinguish hand-spun yarn tension from machine uniformity by touch. Understands why Pashmina at 12–14 microns physically cannot be machine-spun — not as a heritage claim but as a constraint imposed by fibre physics.
Supply Chain Transparency
Knows how micron count manipulation works in commercial supply chains. Understands where origin claims are blurred between goat, trader, processor, and retailer — and how to build a chain that does not allow that blurring.
Production Economics
Understands the cost structure from raw fibre (₹3,000/100g) through spinning, weaving, embroidery, and finishing to international retail. Knows what honest pricing looks like — and what pricing that defies production cost mathematics reveals about a product.
Heritage Craft Knowledge
Works directly with Naqash designers, Kani weavers, and spinning communities. Has direct relationships with the ~2,000 master Kani weavers still active in Kashmir — not through intermediaries but through the family connections built over three generations.
Global Market Perspective
International business experience across markets that consume Pashmina — US, Europe, Middle East. Understands the disconnect between what buyers believe they are purchasing and what is actually in the product — and how to bridge that gap with education rather than marketing.
The Edge in Plain Terms
Most brands focus on branding narratives. Aaqib focuses on fibre science, provenance, and structural integrity. The difference is not cosmetic — it determines every sourcing decision, every product description, and every claim Pashwrap makes to its customers.
My edge is not marketing. It is clarity.
Why Pashwrap Exists
Pashwrap was not started to sell scarves. It was started to correct a distortion. The market was broken in three fundamental ways — and each one had a direct, personal meaning for someone born and raised in Kashmir.
The industry was not just selling fake product. It was selling diluted understanding. Pashwrap exists to correct that.
— Aaqib Bhat
How Pashwrap Is Built
Every decision at Pashwrap begins with one question: Does this protect the integrity of the fibre and the dignity of the artisan? If it doesn't, we don't do it. That is not a mission statement — it is an operating constraint.
A Custodial Relationship
There is a word Aaqib uses to describe his relationship with Pashmina that is worth dwelling on: custodial.
Not transactional. Not entrepreneurial. Custodial — the role of someone entrusted with something fragile that belongs, in a meaningful sense, to more than just themselves.
The craft of Kashmiri Pashmina — the yindeer, the khaddi, the Kani talim, the Naqash's graph paper, the spinner's hands — is not a competitive advantage. It is a inheritance that three generations of the Bhat family have been privileged to work within. Pashwrap is how that inheritance becomes a living, economically viable practice rather than a museum exhibit.
Approximately 2,000 master Kani weavers remain active in Kashmir today. The number is not growing. The spinners who produce Pashmina yarn on the yindeer are predominantly older women; the transmission to the next generation is fragile. The Naqash families who design Kani patterns are few and their knowledge is not institutionally preserved.
Pashwrap cannot solve all of this alone. But every authentic purchase — every shawl that reaches a buyer who understands what they are holding — is a direct economic argument for why this craft is worth continuing. That is the practical meaning of custodianship in a market economy.
I don't see this craft as inventory. I see it as something fragile in a world that rewards speed over patience. Every decision at Pashwrap begins with one question: Does this protect the integrity of the fibre and the dignity of the artisan? If it doesn't, we don't do it.
I am not accountable to a trend. I am accountable to a craft.
That changes everything.
— Aaqib Bhat, Founder, Pashwrap
Learn From the Expert
Aaqib's knowledge of Pashmina — its science, its production, its economics, and its fraud problem — is documented in full in the Pashwrap knowledge base. These are not marketing articles. They are the most technically detailed public resources on Kashmiri Pashmina available online.
Explore Pashwrap's Collection
Every piece in the Pashwrap collection is sourced directly from Changthangi goats in Ladakh and produced by master artisans in Kashmir. No blends. No machine processing. No inflated claims.