KATHMANDU, Nov 5: All businesses, big and small, are having a hard time adjusting to the crisis today, and it's normal for budding entrepreneurs to feel discouraged.
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However, every successful business houses today has had their own phases of struggle—they have been through a decade-long civil war, drastic political transition, and days of strikes and bandas, to name a few. But their eventual success is testament to the fact that tough times do not last, tough people do.
Republica talked to some well known entrepreneurs about the struggles they went through when they started their respective ventures and how they persevered through the trying times. They also have an advice or two to budding entrepreneurs. Read on...Amit Agrawal
CEO, Janaki Technology
Janaki Technology (JanakiTech) was initiated by three engineering students from IOE—Manish Modi, Arvind Sah and Bhawani Shankar Goyal, in 2008. At that time it did various app and web development works on a contract basis from and outside Nepal. Its first office was Manish and Arvind's rented room in Kathmandu. In November 2009, JanakiTech inaugurated its first 'real' office in Jawalakhel. The same year I too joined the company with the plan of working on its own project. Then in March 2010, on the occasion of World Sparrow Day, we launched Sparrow SMS.
It was difficult then to establish a brand in a market already so small and saturated by other SMS service providers. Nonetheless we came up with some innovative services and distributed flyers ourselves at Ratna Park and elsewhere. We would be online for more than 15 hours a day which turned out to be advantageous for us as we provided quick response. Since we didn't have inverter at home, we stayed in office most of the time so that at least one of us could remain online. After about a year, Sparrow SMS finally took a definite pace and today it is ranked as one of the top brands in Facebook in Nepal. Later in 2011, we also launched Picovico in the global market, realizing that our service was only limited in Nepal. Picovico is also getting a good response in various countries, especially the USA.
For emerging entrepreneurs, I would like to advice them to not look for ideas, but rather for sizeable problems and then to invent ideas to solve them. Also, there's no point getting demotivated by problems like infrastructure and electricity because like all problems, they too have solutions. Just do your calculations well and always think of the end users while developing solutions.
Chetan Bhandari
Chairman, Bajeko Sekuwa
Some 30 years ago, my father had a small sekuwa stall near the Tribhuvan International Airport. Customers called him 'Baje' as he was a Brahmin. Soon Bajeko Sekuwa became a renowned product in the locality. I started getting involved in my father's business in 1992. By then we had managed to expand our business a bit, but I felt we could do much better. We then shifted our business to Gairigaun where we opened our first well invested restaurant. My father was against that decision for he thought it was a waste of money. The main challenge then was to attract customers. The name 'Bajeko Sekuwa' somehow suggested the place to be a popular junction for those who wanted to drink. Therefore, we had good male customers but they didn't bring along their wives. But people soon realized that our restaurant was not exclusively for drinking men, so men started coming in with their families, and we began to do better. Today we have 10 branches in and outside the valley.
The current fuel crisis is hitting us hard. Many of our suppliers aren't able to provide us with meat and it's difficult now to transport products. At this time the solution is to be efficient with the products and finding alternatives. At Bajeko Sekuwa, we have begun using firewood and electric appliances as alternatives to LPG.
Biswas Dhakal
Chairperson, eSewa
When we formed eSewa in 2009 as the Digital Payment Portal allowing one to make online and offline payments to various merchants, transfer funds to various banks, etc, it was a difficult deal to explain people the sole idea this business was based on. Internet banking was very posh at that time; something only a handful of people were familiar with. It took quite some time to convince people that they could trust us with their money. At the start, we opted to sell our services through recharge cards since its concept was well known in the market. After few months we shifted to internet banking. Today many people understand the concept of eSewa and equally many use it to make their lives easier.
At trying times entrepreneurs need to keep faith in their core value and continue working towards achieving it. If they pass the hurdle somehow, they'll be able to do much better when the times become better.
Unesh Jung Shahi
Co-founder, Attsh
We initiated Attsh in 1999 with four partners who are also siblings. Our eldest brother was very much into sports, particularly football. In 1998, he even went to ASIAD football as an assistant coach held in Bangkok, Thailand. There he found that the jerseys and t-shirts sold were of very good quality and had some really nice prints. He wanted to introduce the same quality in Nepal. So we began our pilot business in New Road with about 30 t-shirts imported from Korea. People really liked the display but many could not afford the price. Therefore, in 2001, we even started printing and manufacturing shirts using just one machine.
It was a difficult time for many businesses in the country due to the Maoist insurgency. Each day we were daunted by the fear of getting vandalized, thus our shops mostly remained closed. But we were hopeful about better days to come and therefore we maintained patience. Today we have about 30 machines and two showrooms.
For emerging entrepreneurs, I'd like to advise them to be patient. This is a trying time for all of us, and we can't do much except not lose our cool and keep persevering.
