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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Here is my wish for you

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Here are my hopes and wishes for you in the next year (2011).

I hope in the coming year, you will steal more. Steal more time for yourself to reflect, pause and try to understand why you are here, and what makes you happy.

I hope in the coming year, you will break  some rules. Break the norms set by others, the society, the mobs or the lizard brain who tell what you should do and should not. Follow your inner conscience. May this be your moral compass.

I hope in the coming year, you will pick a few fights. Fight against “small”  injustices that you see around everyday (maybe on your way to work). Fight to enforce that nagging traffic rule violations perhaps (in your city).

I hope in the coming year, you will contemplate death regularly. To accept every day that you are eventually going to die,  makes you realize what your true priorities in life are. What would you do, if  you only had a week more?

I hope in the coming year, you will be garlanded with shoes or hit with tomatoes. Dare to do something disruptive, that scares the people who cling to status quo or to dogma. Let them humiliate you since they are

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Organize the unorganized. Build platforms for them. Transform Nepal !

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Nepal today has  ‘syndicates’ of the so called ‘incompetent’ people, while the ‘nation builders’ amongst us are bitterly divided, isolated and looking for someone to unite us.
Here is an excellent opportunity for you to organize and unite the unorganized, this huge mass of Nepali talents, “potential nation builders” !

Why?
Because if you can organize this important yet unorganized group, you have the opportunity to jump-start the Bibeksheel (entrepreneurial + political + social) transformation we need to make Nepal prosperous.

Who are the ‘unorganized’ I am talking about here?
This untapped group of Nepalis are educated, have exposure and have nation building skills. They are honest, creative and daring. And they  have the right moral compass but lack the will, direction and guts to walk alone in that direction. They are the ‘nation-builders’ who WILL build our Nepal given the right environment.

How?
Build platforms where these nation builders can come together and unite. You will end up surprised at its huge impact!

Networking Platform to make Nepal prosperous

A group of progressive bureaucrats aligned with social innovators/social entrepreneurs along with the youthful 

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Nepali Entrepreneur Birendra Basnet from Buddha Air reveals his story

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Originally posted in the discussion thread here in Entrepreneurs for Nepal forums. Join its free group here in Facebook!

Here is a short transcript of the interaction with Birendra Bahadur Basnet, Managing Director of the very successful, and the one of the most reliable Airline in Nepal,  Buddha Air. This happened on 25th November, 2010 as part of the Last Thursdays event co-organized by “Entrepreneurs for Nepal.”

My family background is basically in agriculture and in that respect, I am a first generation entrepreneur (outside of agriculture). The reason behind opening Buddha Air was the creation of wealth. Fourteen years ago, when we were establishing Buddha Air, we didn’t have any equity and hence we started with debt finance. Looking back, the determination that we had fourteen years ago, was the key for the establishment of Buddha Air. Being a middle class family, opening up an airline company was a joke for everybody else. Even our own family made fun of us. They mocked, We didn’t have five thousand rupees in our pocket but we were forwarding a project worth three hundred million rupees. There were

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