amit

‪#‎storychallenge‬

Year 2003, after SLC : I got sales job at WAVE magazine. Realised I am too young for it and I left in a week.

Year 2003-2005 : Learned to make handicrafts, back then family business are always good skills to have.
Passion for music, Rezon pocket’s money were used to buy musical instruments and participate in band competitions. Apparently lost.

Year 2006 – 2007 : Started taking projects of video, photography, animations, editing. With a small handy-cam and go to events, take videos and make some money and atleast supports my pocket money.

Year 2006 – 2007: Started prempatra.com.np with Aadar & Rezon and get involve in events as promotional partners, could not earn even to pay hosting. We used to pay Rs.1500 per year for 10MB.

Thats where we developed web design skill and make design in short time 🙂 as we used to release new design every week.

Changed HTML extension to PHP, we thought we made dynamic website.Pawan dai remember 😛

Year 2007-2008: Dropped prempatra.com.np as the name was not relevant and no revenue. Then started Namaste Kathmandu (namastektm.com). Organised cultural event at Mangal Bazar at $100 funded by Bikram Blaxinix Maharjan from US. (We never returned him, never.)

Year 2008: Took office space to run event management and website business with Rezon Aadar Bikram to make websites for local clients, clients never gave us money. Rent was paid by parents 🙁
Started ktmpasal.com, online marketplace for nepalese, where they can buy groceries using their ATM card. Seriously we integrated ATM card with website back then. Went to visit banks, get scolded badly from IT departments with their security concerns. In 6 months we hardly made 6 orders. We closed it. Business model changed and we started online bidding for products. Didn’t work out either.
Started an online community Sathiz.com, while facebook was not even popular in Nepal.

Year 2008: We realised we are ahead of time, our ideas were too advance that this market cannot resist.(Look at the number of online stores now, happy to see the ideas we had in 2008 are doing good business now).

Year 2008-2010: All of us frustrated and joined jobs. I joined YOMARI, refAshish dai.

Year 2010: Entrepreneurship stroke back again in mind. Took some freelancing projects from US, clients never got back after project completion. Frustration again.

Year 2010-11: Worked with many startup companies as designer, never ever satisfied, low pay or no pay.

Year 2011: Joined BRAINDIGIT
Year 2011: Started getting lots of projects from ODesk with the help of Bicky,Subash. Started making good money.
Year 2011: Started making good money and spend it over beers and parties, bit spoiled. Then invested in online business in India. Legally shut down. Broke as hell. Could not return loans, loans kept on adding. Beer habit gone down to Chisapasal every evening.
Year 2011: Invested in restaurant. Shut down after 10 months. Broke again.

Year 2012-2013: Co-founded Pagoda Labs with Shoki Dixanta. Successful venture but not good enough to pay my loan.

Year 2013: Freelancing (Nightshift $$ jobs). Waiwai and jhol momo became regular lunch. Almost gave up on everything, started hunting jobs in India and Bangkok.

Year 2013-2015: Joined EB Pearls ref Saroj dai. Founded – The Bootstrap Themes and few projects from US to pay loan.

Year 2015: Loan cleared that I took at 2011.

year 2015: Joined Leapfrog Technology Inc. as Project Manager.

Year 2015: Co-Founded Namaste Kathmandu

Year 2016: Entrepreneur journey seriously begin to scale-up Namaste Kathmandu and The Bootstrap Themes.

There are tons of people who helped me at those frustrating days.

Many people left me in between, Thank you for leaving.

p.s: There are many stories that I do not want to share publicly.

3 Responses

  1. Nice journey Amit. Consider me as one of your close observer and I find you inspiring. You are not born to do 9 to 5 office jobs. You enjoy a thrilling ride instead. From your timeline, i see that you start spontaneously, and if you have to you fail fast, then you rise up again with a new thing in mind. Good luck !!

    1. Thank you. I never expect nor thought that you observe me that way. Happy to know this. Thank you for this, it meant a lot to me.

  2. Really Inspired by your writing. I would like to read more of your stories. Please add a RSS feed to your site :)expect nor thought that you observe me that way. Happy to know this. Thank you for this, it meant a lot toA

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