Story of an enterpreneur

Samriddiko Bato by Keshav Shrestha, Publisher: Creative Books, Kathmandu. 2017. Pages 209, Price Rs. 325/USD 5. ISBN 978-9937-0-1864-7

Nepal is a country where most of the youth, unlike in most of the developed or developing countries, don't dream to run their own business and be an entrepreneur, rather prefer to fight in the Public Service Commission's exams for the public sectors job or queue up for private sector jobs, and some of them even use every possible way from power to money just to land upon a chair of a junior level officer or a primary teacher or a police constable.

We don't have entrepreneurship culture.

Our education system does not include skill development programmes, and guardians don't motivate their kids to take up our own business. As a result, every youth blames the society, education system and the government for the lack of opportunities in the country, and then flies abroad in search of better education or job.

But there are people who go against the tide.

Keshav Shrestha of Hetauda in Makwanpur district is one of them who initiated a wool industry during his teenage just to be failed miserably.

Slightly discouraged by his first venture, he joins a government office but faces continuous challenges to work against the rampant corruption.

 His desire to work as a government employee wanes after working a couple of years in that government office and Hetauda Cement factory after that.

With the little bit of savings that he made in those years, he invests in poultry farming. Later on he takes up another business – this time distribution of electronic goods and furniture on installment basis – with his friend. After that he runs a carpet industry. All of those business ventures crumble one after another.

Those entrepreneurship efforts taught him many lessons, dos and don'ts, business techniques and ways to maintain relationship with people.

Recently, Shrestha has come up with a book 'Samriddiko Bato' which portrays all of his experiences in businesses.

He has presented his learning and experiences in such a way that it can be business-mantra for the youth of Nepal. Not only that he has cautioned to take up joint-venture cautiously, but also suggests not being too ambitious in business, and letting the business grow organically.

In his book, Shrestha urges the parents to provide the seed money to their children's business and motivate them to take up their own ventures.

'You spend millions of rupees to educate your children, but hesitate to provide a couple of hundred thousand rupees to fund their business?' he asks.

He also proposes to establish a 'Bishe Nagarchi Company', after the legendary character who gives idea to the founder of modern Nepal – Prithvi Narayan Shah, to facilitate crowd funding in order to collect capital to invest in various business projects.

As prominent economist Prof. Dr. Bishwambhar Pyakuryal rightly says in his comment on the book - 'Economics is a common sense made complicated by nonsense', the writer has put his every effort to make both the idea and language in the book as simple as possible. To read and understand the book one need not to be an economist of student of management, everyone can get motivated by the book, specially the stories of failures as explained.

Born in 1966 in Hetauda, Shrestha already has authored a dozen books –  'Malati', 'Juni Bitla Ra?' and 'Bisthapit Rahar' novels, 'Bandhan Bhitraka Abhibyaktiharu', 'Chautho Prahar', 'Khojdai Janda Timilai' and 'Chassa Chussa' poetry collection, a book on general knowledge and four books on public auditing. 

(Published in The Rising Nepal Daily)