'CNIYEF Nepal StartUp Fest 2022' to be held today
KATHMANDU, JUNE 24
With the start-up ecosystem still in its infancy, budding entrepreneurs in Nepal often struggle with finding investors to fund their dreams, not knowing where to turn to advice and in building a team that won't sink their venture.
In a bid to fill these voids, the Confederation of Nepalese Industries Young Entrepreneurs Forum (CNIYEF) is organising 'CNIYEF Nepal StartUp Fest 2022' here on Saturday.
"Neither a conference nor a summit, the 'CNIYEF Nepal StartUp Fest 2022' is more like a festival to build the start-up ecosystem in Nepal," said Manish Shrestha, one of the members of the organising committee.
To build the start-up ecosystem, this fest is collaborating with the National Planning Commission, Youth and Small Entrepreneur Self-Employment Fund and the Indian Embassy in Nepal. "To gain support from government bodies and better comprehend the start-up scenario in India, we are collaborating with these partners," Shrestha shared.
Moreover, Team Ventures, Global Equity Fund, Aadhyanta Fund Management, Himalayan Capital and Televenture Partner Pvt Ltd, among others, have pledged capital investment to fund 10 promising Nepali start-ups selected from a pool of over 300 applications.
According to the organisers, the top 10 start-ups were shortlisted based on their innovativeness and scalability.
Meanwhile, the festival will also confer awards under six different categories to various start-up entrepreneurs for their contribution to the field.
The award categories include 'Startup of the Year', 'Best Innovation of the Year', 'Best Customer Excellence', 'Green Startup of the Year', 'Social Enterprise of the Year', and 'Entrepreneur of the Year'.
Shrestha added that the festival will see presentation by the keynote speaker and panel discussions by national and international experts on various topics pertaining to startups.
Likewise, he said there will be various interesting programmes on the sidelines along with live performances.
The forum is planning to organise the festival every year henceforth to firmly establish 'CNIYEF Nepal Start- Up Fest' as the 'not-to-bemissed event' for start-ups, investors and all other concerned stakeholders.
The organisers expect over 3,000 visitors to attend the festival, with ticket price to the event set at Rs 300 per person.
'We hope to encourage more people and firms to invest in start-ups'
What prompted you to organise this event? What are the main objectives?
Start-ups in Nepal are still not considered as a serious ecosystem with the potential to contribute to the nation's economy and social wellbeing. While our counterparts in India and the global south are driving their nation's and the region's economies, start-ups in Nepal still face basic challenges that hinder its growth. With the intention to celebrate the spirit of entrepreneurship the objectives for organising the fest were: a) To connect potential start-ups with serious investors, b) To align key stakeholders like the government bodies, academia, legal entities to design favourable start-up ecosystem in the country through long term partnerships; and c) To encourage more youth to get into entrepreneurship.
How is this fest different from other similar events that have been organised in the past?
It is very encouraging to see many events happening to promote start-ups in Nepal. Nevertheless, the majority of the events focus on panel discussions or prize money and rewards, which although well intentioned, still do not directly address the big challenges of lack of funding and mentorship.
Through this fest we aim to connect start-ups with great potential to serious investors looking to invest both money and time into start-ups and its founders. For this, we have garnered an impressive investment pool of Rs 480 million to be injected into 10 promising Nepali start-ups that were selected from a pool of over 300 applications.
Also, we want people to celebrate and have fun, for which we have added attractions like live performances, exciting exhibitors, robo wars, robo soccer, which are sure to keep our participants engaged and inspired.
What are the expected outcomes?
Through the fest, we hope to encourage more people and firms to invest in start-ups, we hope more youth are encouraged to start their own companies, we hope to connect different stakeholders including academia, legal, government bodies to work together on developing favourable start-up policies.
Most importantly, we hope everyone involved has fun celebrating the spirit of entrepreneurship.
'This event will create the spark that Nepal desperately needs'
What is the scenario for start-ups and how will this event help promote the culture?
The hashtag for our event is #StartForNepal since we believe that for Nepal's economy to prosper, thousands of start-ups need to come together, creating millions of job opportunities and a thriving market.
We hope this event will create the spark that Nepal desperately needs. Today, start-up is new to Nepal, as only a handful of startups have made it big. But things are changing and moving to a new, positive direction. All we need to do as CNIYEF is to inspire the nation towards building a start-up nation.
What was the process of short-listing the projects?
And what is going to happen going forward? We partnered with Anterprerana, Idea Studio and Impact Hub as our 'screening partners'. Their organisations have always been dealing with start-ups as an incubation centre. Hence, all the applications coming to us (around 500) were screened by our screening partners.
Then, the selected 30 applicants received further grooming sessions via our partner 'Nepal Private Equity Association (NEPA)'.
Here, they were trained to make investment memo, curate their pitches and Pioneer Law Firm, Anup Upreti also prepped them from a legal stand-point.
After that, 10 start-ups were selected in the final-round where pre-pitching event happened on Friday and the final pitching will be in front of the live audience on Saturday at Soaltee Hotel.
We have a committed pool of Rs 480 million, out of which we are expecting funds of at least Rs 50 million to Rs 150 million to be secured by our selected 10 startups during the event day. We plan to continue this fund post the event so that by the next event day, all Rs 480 million are invested in start-ups from across the country.
A version of this article appears in the print on June 25, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
