Every Last Thursday of the Gregorian month, Bikalpa – an Alternative jointly organizes the “Last Thursday’s” event at Biratnagar in collaboration with Hotel Namaskar, Makalu Television, Nepal Youth Entrepreneur Forum (NYEF), Biratnagar International College and with the support of Atlas Network. The objective of the program is to disseminate the ideas and knowledge about entrepreneurship through the personal sharing of successful entrepreneurs. Also, the program creates an opportunity to do networking and share ideas among the participants.
The 49th Last Thursday with an Entrepreneur was held on September 26, 2019 Biratnagar. The Guest Speaker for the program was Ms.Sunita Nhemaphuki, who is the Managing Director of R&D Innovations. She has been on an entrepreneurial journey since the last 15 year. Over the period of 7 years she has been working in the agriculture sector in the fields of 3cs – Communication, Consulting and Coordination. Her company works as one stop solution for those involved in the agricultural sector by empowering farming community. She has a Master’s degree in Mass Communication from Dhaka University. She is also associated with the Federation of Women Entrepreneurs Association of Nepal.
During the talk, she started touching upon with her childhood memories where she told although being raised in Bhaktapur life was not easy for her. She said she had to walk an hour to go to school also she was suffering from rheumatic heart disease. This made her face a lot of hardship to her. While sharing she told after completing her SLC she started to engage in doing work. At first, she worked as a teacher and then completing her high school she joined Radio station as the marketing agent for Advertisement. During this time she learned about the concept of marketing and was inspired to start her own Advertising Agency.
The Starting journey without money.
Before starting up, she was working in the media advertisement. This ignited her passion for marketing and entrepreneurship. She thought of starting up of her own business but at that point time she was just 19 years old and no one was ready to invest in her ideas. So, she burrowed 5000 rupees from her friends to start the business. After that, she realized that she needed more things such as office space computers and printers. She talked with her college management facility where she convinced them by saying “I am going to publish a magazine where College doesn’t have to pay money but should buy as much as it can”. Since then she started publishing a magazine called “The Business time”. This is how from this business she started to pay her installment. Also, it was her starting journey of entrepreneurship without money she says.
Education and Entrepreneurship
Sunita says while doing business and study same time she could not focus on her studies. As she wanted to do something on her own and searching for further opportunities. She came to Kathmandu and again joined a Mass communication study. There she came to know if you want to be entrepreneur then you should not quit if something goes wrong. Further, she added she also participated in a business competition organized by WOW magazine where she was the winner from Masters Category.
Working around the challenges
She told up to 2009 she was able to establish a good Advertising company in Kathmandu. At the same time she also got Norwegian scholarship called NORAD to study. She remembered in that period of time it was a very challenging time for every business to survive due to eight hours of Load shedding, political strikes, and unstable government. In this period of time, she made a choice that handing her company to staff she went to study for Bangladesh for two years. After completing her study she came to Nepal. While working for a development agency for making documentary she came to know the economic status of rural women. This made her realize how she can help to uplift the economic life of them. So, after consulting with her friends she decided to publish a magazine related to Agricultural information issues. Today this magazine had become the largest circulated agriculture magazine in Nepal and had more than ten thousand subscribers.
She also highlighted the current work of her fourth business called Agro business center. This venture helps farmers from production to market Linkages. We also different brand products of Agro business. We work associating with different village farmers. Right now we have eighteen such centers. Eighteen thousand farmers are directly associated and working with us. We also have agro apps and we are also working in financial literacy.
Finally, she ended her speech touching upon Positive thought and exploring yourself. She said one should keep on walking and explore their network. After her speech, the audience posed question to the speaker about how one can acquire skills of convincing people beyond the textbook. Also, how the government and policymakers need to be held more accountable for their actions in the agricultural issue. While the speakers tried their best to respond to audiences related queries. 85 people attended the event held at Hotel Namaskar Biratnagar.
