Author name: Anupam

Collaboration is the key to create an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Every stakeholder through this ecosystem will foster in Nepal. One of such collaborations is between Idea Studio Nepal and National Innovation Centre (Rastriya Aviskar Kendra). The aim is to create unique models to retain, nurture, and promote Nepal’s efficient human capital. This is designed to leverage their considerable intellect, creativity, and talent, and to foster the country’s social and economic growth. This partnership will also develop mutual cooperation in knowledge generating research activities and business incubation services and training related to entrepreneurship and innovation. On the basis of this, National Innovation Center will recommend three ideas that will get direct entry to Idea Studio Season 5. The ideas will be selected after a meticulous process.  

Idea Studio Nepal (ISN) and Mega Bank Nepal Limited (MBNL) have collaborated for two years with an agreement from September 22, 2019 to September 21, 2021. This collaboration is to promote women entrepreneurs and SMEs through access to entrepreneurial skills, knowledge, and finance.   The intent of this partnership is to use the knowledge, resources and networks of both organizations efficiently and effectively to encourage, promote and establish innovation and sustainable business in Nepal in order to contribute to sustainable development in the country. This will facilitate to foster entrepreneurship ecosystem among the stakeholders, especially women, collaborate in creating curriculum and research in the field of entrepreneurship in Nepal. As a Banking Brand Champion MBNL will provide loan to the women entrepreneurs with or without collateral at subsidized interest rate, financial literacy, support knowledge creation and research in the field of banking and women in business among others.

College Idea Hunt 2019 was introduced to enable the college students towards entrepreneurship. College Idea Hunt is a preliminary round event of the grand event I Have an Idea 2019. Both the events are preliminary rounds of Idea Studio Season 4. The prep began with college activation through presentation in more than 100 colleges located in Kathmandu Valley. The details included an introduction of program, the process, benefits, eligibility, evaluation criteria, prizes, and the submission of ideas (contact information) et cetera. This time green entrepreneurship was introduced to the students and were encouraged to submit ideas related to that. More than 1,800 students of varied faculties were reached.     More than 100 ideas were submitted and shortlisting was in two phases. Sixty ideas were shortlisted first. They submitted two minutes videos as part of shortlisting. Total 10 ideas were selected for the I Have An Idea 2019 event. The ideas ranged from green business to social enterprise to service to technology. Experts groomed these Top 10 ideas for the final event with five days incubation at Idea Studio Nepal office.     On September 16, 2019 I have an Idea event was held at Rastriya Sabha Griha. More than 300 audiences witnessed the event along with colleges, media and some known personalities. Dr. Ram Kantha Makaju Shrestha MD, Vice Chancellor Kathmandu University chaired the Event. Prof. Dr Bhagawan Koirala, Shrinkhala Khatiwada-Miss Nepal World 2018, and Sujeet Regmi- Co-founder of Sajilo Marmat Sewa were the guest speakers at the event. Sajilo Marmat Sewa was one of the winners of College Idea Hunt 2016. The Top ideas pithed their ideas in front of a panel of judges— Sanjib Subba, CEO National Banking Institute, Santosh Mani Nepal, Senior Director Policy and Governance, WWF Nepal, Anupama Khunjeli, CEO Mega Bank Nepal Ltd., and Kawish Bhakta Shrestha, Co-founder Sajilo Marmat Sewa. After much deliberation Top 3 winners (Joseph Shreshtha (Reverse Vending Machine: फोहोर दिनुस मोहोरलिनुस, सव्य बनौ बनाऊ), Anshu Pradhan (Sister’s Enterprises), and Rupesh Duwal (Tetra Pak Recycling) were selected and awarded with NRs 1,00,000 each. Along with the award money, Top 3 winners got direct entry in the month-long incubation, an opportunity to pitch their ideas in the national television show Idea Studio Season 4 and unconditional support of Idea Studio Nepal.  

Music Securities is a registered financial services agency of Japan and it launched an impact investment platform called Securite in 2008. The reason was to integrate several services and categories into one web based platform that would support to manage account and customer information in one system. This was extended business opportunities for wide range of industries and customers. It generates funds for businesses of different sectors from music, restaurants, agriculture, IT, sports, energy, manufacturing et cetera.   Idea Studio Nepal (ISN) on the other hand is working towards establishing entrepreneurship ecosystem in Nepal since 2014. One of the essential components for this is financial support to entrepreneurs. In this endeavour Music Securities and ISN collaborated to originate fund for enterprises on July 17, 2019. This is another milestone for ISN.   In 2018 ISN had announced launch of Idea Impact Fund and in 2019 it got closer to fulfilling its commitment. This year the deserving enterprises will receive benefits due to this collaboration.

Infrastructure Idea Hunt Grand 2019 was held on September 12 at Hyatt Regency. Thisis an initiation of Confederation of Nepalese Industries and Idea Studio Nepal. The objective was to encourage Nepalese to come up with innovative solutions to address infrastructure deficit and contribute to the country’s development.Out of numerous ideas sent, Top 10 ideas were shortlisted. Top 10 ideators then went through rigorous rounds of mentoring at Idea Studio Nepal incubation center. They also got an opportunity to pitch their ideas in infront of the members of the Parliament. Finally 10 ideators pitched their ideas to a panel of seven juries. The jury members were from various backgrounds such as engineering, architecture, business, and business incubation. Ideators presented their ideas in three minutes and two minutes was slotted for questions by the judges. Based on the presentations, ideas, and their answers judges scored them and the Top 3 winners were selected. Ideators pitched their ideas to the jury members in front of 70 audiences. One of the ideas was of BidhiMandal, it was brick made of plastic and cement, her project focused on reducing plastic waste and also using it to build houses. She brought her prototype for everyone to see. Another idea was a biogas plant presented by Sanjay Rajbhandari. His idea was to bring some reforms in the plant structure and utilise the bio waste that is generated daily in the urban areas. And KishorPoudel came with an idea of collaborating agriculture with engineering. The idea was to plant genetically modified apple trees in areas affected by landslides and soil erosion. After much deliberation the winners were announced. BidhiMandal with her Project Aawas became the first winner winning a cash prize of Rs 1,50,000. As there was a tie between two ideas thus both the ideas (ShritiAwaleand team for Home Automation, and Ramesh Pathak and team for Traffic Mapp) became runners up wining Rs 1,00,000 cash prize each. All the participants seemed very happy with the results, and were feeling encouraged to work more on their idea and most of them said that this was just a beginning for their project to kick off. Though there were Top three winners at the event, every other idea was a winner. The opportunity they got was rare and most of them got positive feedback from the audience and judges. SoniyaAdhikari one of the Top 10 ideators shared that three investors at the event approached her. And Poudel could not give time speak to all the people who approached him.

UNICEF Eritrea and the National Union of Eritrean Youth and Students (NUEYS) recently concluded a 5-day workshop on building entrepreneurship skills among youth in the capital Asmara. Forty-seven youth from different Zobas, including innovators from emerging start-ups, worked under the guidance of Professor Rupesh K. Shrestha from Kathmandu University, Nepal. They created innovative business plans which included solar powered digital libraries, energy saving cooking-stoves, eco-friendly construction materials, education software and access for the hearing impaired/deaf, and low-cost energy-saving laptops. Read Full Story Here

आइडिया स्टुडियो नेपाल र मेलम्ची नगरपालिकाबिच आइडिया स्टुडियो नेपालको सहकार्यमा मेलम्ची नगरपालिकाभित्र रहेका घरेलु कृषिक्षेत्रलाई आधुनिकीकरण गरी उत्पादित बस्तुको बजार प्रबद्र्घन गर्दै व्यबसायिक कृषी कर्जा लगानी गर्ने बिषयमा त्रिपक्षिय सम्झौता भएको छ । Read Full Story Here

In June 2019 Idea Studio Nepal and WWF Nepal came together to create history. The intent of the collaboration is to use the knowledge, resources and networks of both organisations efficiently and effectively encourage green innovation and sustainable business in Nepal in order to contribute to sustainable development in the country. It is essential to create a platform to promote green businesses in Nepal as it is rare. This initiative will help influence and bring change at the policy level when the green businesses will flourish and it gradually will create an ecosystem. Also co-create curriculum and research in the field of green innovation, financing and investmentment will only enhance the system.

The curriculum was launched in Season 3 and it was developed to learn better entrepreneurial skills and business knowledge. There are two parts of the curriculum, one was developed in partnership with Oulu University of Applied Sciences- Oamk, Finland, and Kathmandu University School of Management (KUSoM) called i-lad studio model which is based on intensive experiential lab based learning and human centric design thinking. Another is called i-venture creation developed in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA.