Essay 12 : DELTA Essay Writing Competition
Engineering Entrepreneurship in Nepal
by Pramesh Regmi
Computer Engineering
Final Year, IOE Pulchowk
Mostly I have hurdled my mind about where in life I want to go; what I want to be. This is partly because, in life there is not much to choose from, or maybe I have been said so, and partly because majorly the society has been a circus of tell-tales and have been repressing us their own ideas tyrannically. But these thoughts apart, what I really have been advocated since I was a small kiddo, is about putting mind in my own business rather than slimming my brain and me myself into something that, at the end, will be nothing but rather a honorable duty of me from Monday to Friday to complete. I get out with nothing but dissatisfaction. I might have been very cynical putting front this controversial idea, but the major factor that plays a role of a capable engineer to put his career into Entrepreneurship is having this thought in the first place.
Entrepreneurship basically means not being paranoidly fearful about the risks aboard, when staring up with a small business of own. Although, there comes a bazillion of other factors, when we need to define the term broadly, but the major one here is, one’s idea that one thinks is strong enough to take a boom in some particular time, and with all possibilities of failure being considered, taking a leap of faith, with strong will-power and skill as well. By leap of faith, I am not implying a shot in the dark, rather, only trying to highlight the fact that there lie millions of uncertainties, boosted by the lack of resources, in a direct comparison with the ease and certainty a job may provide. And now, bundling all these together, we may strongly define an Entrepreneur as one who really is strong-willed about his/her own skills and trust his/her ideas to put forward a step that, at most cases can’t be taken back, with a hope of a better future and satisfied oneself.
Now as we come along with the context of Nepal in particular, we are no different when defining the term entrepreneur. The basic idea always is- find ideas that work, find a team that want to work and find a mindset that will work. After all this, you setup something and again, work. Although the definition and the borderline skeleton of this very term is almost the same all around the globe, there are things that go specific. These specifications may vary even at small distances of just 100kms as well. A same model won’t work for Dhading or Kathmandu. So, as the context changes, we are bound to change the model and the possibilities too change. Major factors that come in to play here is society, culture, people and on top of it- requirements. As I am fairly aware about the IT field, as a final year Computer Engineer student, who have worked in the market as well. Nepal may not be voraciously opting for a wholly computerized systems to replace what is there right now, but the society sure is putting its idea in the direction that computers and the electronic medium is a required aspect for education, governance, commerce, data analysis for business and such other fields. And, here comes the possibilities.
This very mindset of the society brings new requirements, which is yet to be filled completely or should I say, which needs filling. So, Entrepreneurship demands attraction. We all have ideas that can put up to a scenario that can easily be automated, so that the production improves. For an instance, our hospital systems are fairly manual, only with a printer and a computer to enroll patients and keep record of doctors and nurses. But the catch here is, we can easily build a system that can accumulate data about the patients, their medical conditions, the medicines prescribed, an automated system to notify a patient that he has an appointment with the doctor, automatic appointment via internet. See, I just gave out an idea that needs fulfilling, and if this actually helps hospitals in long run, say TU Teaching Hospital, which have a voraciously high rate of patient admissions, hospitals will for sure pay a fortune for the system and there comes the win-win situation. Neither the hospital will be charged high by a large company that have a huge processing cost inbound, and neither you as an Entrepreneur will have much expenses of your own. And the priceless part here, you will feel it; what you earlier thought will work, worked and you (with your team of course) succeeded.
The possibilities may seem promising, so why am I not myself into that? I might sure have an idea myself, for I myself provided one idea forward. Yeah, I sure have and I plan to. But as I stated earlier, there are risks aboard, that needs to be recognized. And this my friend, would be the downside, the challenges. Say you (and your team) invest for the same idea, setup an office and approach few hospitals. But the hospitals think that what you are offering may not be much to them, or you couldn’t convince them. You burn out financially soon and then, you drop the idea, and run to the job-life. There are few more challenges inbound. It is not as apparent as in Banglore to get an investment here. The thought process here is still old-school and you may have hard time convincing your parents as well. They may or may not have an investment capability of their own, yet you need to convince them, repressed even by the society. The other challenges you may face are lack of resources, just as I (and my company) didn’t find a service from NTA that could provide automated call initiating server, which is an easy thing abroad. Furthermore, the society may not be shaped as per your idea, just as the failure of custom printed T-shirt service provided by Threadpaints.
So, the conclusive statement I want to put forward is precise- Entrepreneurship is a promising term, a promising career for one who is strong-willed to fight for life to get what he/she wants, and there are thousands of possibilities inbound, yet before jumping into this swamp, we need to have a strong study and understanding of the society, and the idea, and finally the idea and the society together.
