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Digital Max Solutions office in 2008

12 Lessons I learnt running a company in Nepal

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Here are a few lessons I learnt while running my online branding & web development firm Digital Max Solutions (DMS) in Nepal for nearly 10 years. Some of the lessons maybe IT specific. Enjoy!

  1. Be directly, personally responsible to the client. Otherwise chances of success in your project is low.
  2. Ensure quality yourself. If you personally don’t do quality checks on your products or services, make sure the person who does it, has your 100% trust.  (Otherwise it will come back to haunt you)
  3. Delegate but teach. If you delegate your project’s communication to your employee (your associate), teach them exactly how, what, why and when to communicate.
  4. Train your employees (associates).  Do not expect them to solely learn by their own or the internet. Understand the concept yourself first.
  5. Your employees value what they can learn from you personally. Substituting respect from them by friendship with them alone, may not work.
  6. Repeat yourself. Over-communicate. Your employees may not understand the first time around. This happens often. Ask them to paraphrase (To repeat what they understood.)
  7. Client is always right (but only at the end). Do ask them a lot of questions before the project starts. Over-communicate. Have

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Meet Entrepreneur Kiran Joshi, Disney Animator who started an animation studio in Kathmandu

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This is a summary of Last Thursdays series co-hosted by “Entrepreneurs for Nepal” platform which I co-founded. This platform networks entrepreneurs working for Nepal. For more details, go here. A lot of credit also goes to Samriddhi Foundation for transcribing it.

Kiran Bhakta Joshi, the founder of Incessant Rain Animation Studios, left his job of 18 years at the Walt Disney Studios at age 46 to create his own studio in Kathmandu. With a background in computer software, Joshi was working as a graphics software developer for Disney. He was in the team that developed the animation system used for “Beauty and the Beast”, which went on to be nominated for Best Picture at the 1992 Academy Awards. Leaving an 18 year old job, the post of Head of Production and a team of 250 artists and technologists under him was not easy for Kiran. There were doubts among his friends in Walt Disney if an animation studio in Nepal would deliver the quality and turnaround they were seeking.

The year 2007 was the turning point in his life. When he had come to Nepal for the funeral of

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10 tips to know while starting your own business

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We (as part of the Entrepreneurs for Nepal group) have compiled a series of tips and lessons about starting your business, which is taken from established Nepal based entrepreneurs speaking at the Entrepreneurs for Nepal forum. Here are first in hopefully what will be a series. (downloadable pdf version at the end of the article)

1. Success takes patience. Min Bahadur Gurung waited almost for a decade before he expanded his one-room cold storage shop to a small department store, which then went on to be today’s Bhat Bhateni Supermarkets at more than one locations.

2. Know yourself. Karna Sakya has devised a test that helps you find out how you work, how you value time, and what your values are. His point is that unless you really know what you are good at, and how you function, you are not likely to be a success.

3. Know the strength of others you are working with. You can’t do everything by yourself. Icchya Raj Tamang of Civil Group says that working well on a team is a function knowing and using the strengths of other team-mates toward your goals.

tips from Karna Sakya, a locally established entrepreneur and author.

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During a recent interaction with entrepreneurs for nepal group which i established and co-run, got some good tips from Karna Sakya of Kathmandu Guest house fame.

Here are a few.

  1. Experience is critical for an entrepreneur, more than the academic qualification as its it’s the experience that teaches you better on how to manage time, motivate people towards your vision, develop your human resources, get the loan approved, deal with unions etc etc. Nepali entrepreneurs have to learn more from the context of Nepal rather than from international books on entrepreneurship. He cites examples such as, Laxmi Sharma, who has been to a school for not more than three days but became the first woman “Tempo Driver” of Nepal and has then created an internationally sprawling business of handicraft, and is now known as “the button queen on Nepal” for her unique designs of buttons made from animal bones.
  2. “Saraswati ra pasina sittaima bechnu hundaina” (Knowledge and sweat should never be sold for free) and believes that there isn’t anything called free lunch. He adds, “Selfishness is not wrong, if it does not harm others”. Selfishness is a virtue until it hurts others.

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