Scholarship / "From Nepal to USA studying while doing a part time job" - Techno MBA scholarship [4]

Does this sound too personal or am I flying really high with my ambitions and goals?

Some men see things as they are and say why - I dream things that never were and say why not, I always begin my first lecture on entrepreneurship development with this quotation of George Bernard Shaw and try to inspire students to think in this line. Should people thin k in this line, I believe, situation would be different than today, when about one thousand Nepalese are leaving the country every day in search of jobs and higher education, and the rate is growing day by day. Most of these people are leaving the country because they fail to see the opportunities within country and hope to have a better future abroad. About 70% of these people go as low-grade workers to Middle East and other parts of the world. The major portion of the remaining 30% consists of educated technical people who are also resistant to stay back in the country, as they assume faster growth and possibilities abroad. I am aware that in this globalised economy it would be rather conservative to say that these people should not be looking for opportunities outside the nation. However, I would like to believe that we would better utilize the opportunities created by this globalization if we can utilize available resources with in nation and market it around the world.

Nepal has massive resources and bears a huge potential to provide various products and services to the international market. With the political condition improving now, I see a great potential of my country to reap advantage from two rapidly growing economies of the world, China and India. Various businesses have started growing, however knowledge based firms are yet to grow at a large scale and management systems has not yet been rigid and professional within companies. For instance, Nepal is world's forth largest producer of Ginger and supplies large amount of raw ginger to India; however we do not have a single ginger processing plant in our country and we still import garlic ginger paste from India for consumption. Similarly, a number of herbs carrying precious medical value like Yarsagumba (Cordyceps Sinesis) are found in our country which are sold to India in raw form as we do not have the processing capacity; and when processed India sells the extract at a 20 times higher price. Ironically, Nepal is the second largest country in the world in terms of per capita hydropower generation potential and yet we are currently facing 16 hours of load shedding a day. As these examples depict we are not able to exploit the resources available with in our country due to lack of technologically driven small and medium enterprises in our country. Entrepreneurship, I believe, is the key to raise the living standards of people and overall economy of the nation and I am pursuing a journey to help more and more people realize their childhood dream of becoming a successful entrepreneur. I wish to play a part in my country's industrial development and desire to work as a consultant providing consultancy, education and training services in technopreneurship, Industrial and technology management and I would like to pursue Masters in Business Administration specializing in entrepreneurship and small business management.

I have always had keen interest in technopreneurship and it only grew stronger as I witnessed the ballistic economic growth of India particularly fuelled by technology driven firms of small and large sizes. My undergraduate degree in an interdisciplinary field has made me aware and interested to look at the effective and efficient utilization and management of resources. During my undergraduate studies I had a tendency of relating the things I studied back to my own country's situation and I used to formulate and analyze my own case studies based on the industries and enterprises I knew in my country. As my father was serving as the secretary for ministry of industry, commerce and supplies. I used to get a lot of information about present scenario and we used to discuss various ways and policies to promote small and medium enterprises in the country. Later I decided to work at Bosch limited to hone my technical and professional skills and after working for about a year and half during internship and as a graduate apprentice, I decided to come back to my country to utilize the knowledge I had gained.

Amidst whim of flying abroad in search of an easy and better life, I decided to try something different and put my efforts in doing my bit to upraise the economic standard of my society. I believe that things will ultimately turn out well and the long lasting dusk will surely be overcome by a bright dawn in Nepal. Of the various possibilities, I decided to pursue my passion and chose to work to promote and sustain knowledge based entrepreneurship in Nepal. In these two years I have tried to study and understand the entrepreneurial process and am trying to relate and effectively deploy the stimulating factors to motivate technical students to look for opportunities to exploit the countries available resources in the global market. I am currently teaching Entrepreneurship Development and Engineering management to undergraduate students at Kathmandu University. During this tenure of 2 years I have taught to students of various engineering facilities and besides sharing my knowledge, I have also got a chance to broaden my perspectives and scan and analyze possibilities beckon in diverse fields. It gives me immense pride and pleasure when I get to know that some of my students are working to start their own firms in the field of their undergraduate studies after graduating from the university. As I continue teaching I would like to gain deeper knowledge specifically on hurdles and opportunities of raising and managing finance for techno-based small enterprises and strategies for small companies to go global.

Alongside teaching university students, I want to conduct training and consulting services on entrepreneurship for other general citizen, specially targeting rural communities. I envision month-long trainings for communities starting with the entrepreneurship fundamentals and helping them start and sustain small enterprises involving local resources. I would like to focus on technology based enterprises managed by local commons and help them creating access to micro finances and provide long-term consulting at various phases of their venture. I have currently taken initiatives by creating entrepreneurship club at Kathmandu University consisting of interested students who work to provide various services to meet the essential needs of students. I would like to broaden the club's work area to reach such rural communities to provide trainings. I have also been in-talk with the university management about starting an incubation center and spin-off companies. So far, the talks have been very positive and inspiring and we are looking forward for possible collaborations and associations. Currently, as I ask students to prepare business plans as a part of their course, they come up with excellent ideas but it really hurts when I cannot provide any support to such deserving students so that they can work on their ideas right after their graduation. I believe an incubation center will serve as a motivating as well as supporting factor for such enthusiasts and would be at least of little help in stopping the brain drain from the nation.

In my lifetime I have always been attached with excellent institutions and organizations and I would like to continue to strive forward in this pursuit of excellence which is the reason for me to select United States of America as a destination for my graduate studies. I refer to lots of research articles and information from United States of America and extensively use the books of authors from USA. It really intrigues me when I see so much of information database of every minute detail available in USA. Although I try to relate such research findings to Nepal, it is very difficult as there is very little amount of data and information database available in our country. USA is home to a lot of innovative entrepreneurs of the world and I believe the nation itself serves as an entrepreneurship textbook in many ways. USA has the most practical education system and I really like the case study approach followed there by most of the universities while teaching entrepreneurship. I believe during my tenure of graduate studies, I will get profound knowledge backed by intensive interactions with diverse group of people from around the world. Discussions on how entrepreneurship is being supported and promoted in various developed as well as developing countries with the students and professors would be of great help for me throughout my career.

Recently, one Fulbright professor at my university asked me "Nepalese have excellent mathematics and as good as or better English than Indians, then why are Nepalese not into outsourcing while Indians are progressing so well with it?" I had no rigid answer except that, I said, most of it is because of our attitude and low risk appetite. American dream to us has confined to going to USA and studying while doing a part time job. I really would like to answer the professor's question and put all my efforts to change things so that next time he says Nepalese are as good as Indians in all terms.