“Spark Week”, Day 1

Media and Entrepreneurship

“Are you really crazy enough to pursue the idea you have?” Subhas Ghimire; Editor in Chief, Republica National Daily

Spark Week carries symbolism for November 2017 which was announced the ‘Entrepreneurship Month’. The first day of the event status quo of Entrepreneurship in Nepal and how Media and Entrepreneurship were co-related, Technovatives headed towards the Spark Week event, day 1. The event was held at iHub, FNCCI Building, Teku.

A Panel of Intellectual Brains

Even though we were pre-informed of who the panelists and moderator in the event would be, it was a privilege to hear these very fascinating people speak. They were some of the top media persons and entrepreneurs in Nepali context. The General Manager of FACTS Research & Analytics Pvt. Ltd., Manish Jha, acted as the moderator while Kuber Chalise (Editor in Chief of Karobar National Daily), Prateek Pradhan (Baahrakhari News) and Subhas Ghimire (Republica National Daily) were the panelists for the program.

Prologue: Startups in Nepal led by Nepal Entrepreneur’s Hub

Verbal kick-off to the program was provided by Mr. Suman Shakya, a co-founder of Nepal Entrepreneurs’ Hub (that made the event possible under the collaboration with Global Entrepreneurship Network) with his short speech about the introduction of NEHub and the programs they are conducting like Startup Weekend, Spark Meetup, Spark Impact, Spark Mentoring and now the Spark Week to help new startups in Nepal embark on their entrepreneurial journey by any means required.

Nepal’s challenges in blending Media and Entrepreneurship

The discussion began when the moderator Mr. Manish Jha asked the panelists what the challenges entrepreneurs and new startups in Nepal face currently are. The answer given by Mr. Prateek Pradhan justified with reasoning the lack of trust from the investors and crisis of conscious norms and guidelines. Mr. Kuber Chalise responded that companies growing day by day know how to start but not how to institutionalize and organize to make it sustainable which is a weakness in entrepreneur’s part. One key point was made by Mr. Subhas Ghimire that we must always remember that the term “Entrepreneurship” is actually a spirit and what comes next is the process which is building an enterprise. He further went on to say that there is huge mismatch in need and supply chain which can lead to many startups becoming unsuccessful and that startups look appealing at the beginning but lose their track midway. When asked why we only hear about politicians and celebrities made by media but not entrepreneurs. The panelist replied that media is always there to help, but people must come forward. Some businesses don’t even want to come to the media even if they are doing good and others announce big but don’t translate the talk into work. The moderator Manish Jha chipped in with some tips like “Being creative and innovative is not enough for entrepreneurship, it is an enterprise building process”. The key point was that there are two paths to being an entrepreneur- one being the Right path which is long and difficult but sustainable and other is the Shortcut path which is easy and might involve evading the taxes.

Takeaways: Hefty Lunch and a Fresh pot of Ideas

If knowledge and information could fill tummies, instant obesity would be abundant among the elites. The lunch at FNCCI was amazing and absolutely rejuvenating for tired minds. But the lunch was merely a follow up to the beautiful stream of information that we had been served by the esteemed gentlemen.

What the Event had for Nepalese Startups and Entrepreneurs

In hindsight though, for IT students like us, the event did not offer a whole lot on roadmaps for startups and entrepreneurships in Nepal. The discussion was miles off from that track and actually incorporated people from the media sector; which meant the session was more of an interdisciplinary correlation of media and entrepreneurship on the whole. This included ‘media entrepreneurship’, the problem they face, fake media agencies, impact of social media on print media and redesigning media journalism. Nevertheless, these insightful hours and prolific opinions from invited guests ensured we did not leave anything behind.