How I Organized The Nepal's Biggest Workshop On Entrepreneurship

My dear friends, I am Vikrant Panjiyar, Founder and President of Curiouswe, a student-led organization established at the most prominent engineering institute in Nepal IOE Pulchowk Campus, Nepal.

I with my Co-founder, Saket Chaudhary, came up with an idea to promote and develop entrepreneurial skills among the youths of Nepal. We both have business mindsets and are heavily involved in startup-related works even by being students of Electronics, Communication, and Information engineering. Because we believe that

Nepal needs more entrepreneurs now than it needed ever before.

So, we started by establishing Curiouswe at the college level and conducted Nepal’s First workshop on entrepreneurship in 2022 entitled “The Entrepreneur’s Guide For Beginners” which was a great success but it needed some improvements so we conducted 2.O version of this workshop this year. Let us find out what and how did we do it.

On July 28th, 2023, Curiouswe wrapped up “The Entrepreneur’s Guide For Beginners 2.O”, a seven-day workshop on entrepreneurship that culminated in a Startup Idea Pitch Competition.

The event was a huge success bringing together 24 greatest Entrepreneurs of Nepal, 50 startup Ideas registrations with 16 dynamic pitches, 200+ participants & and 1000+ visitors from 50+ colleges inside Kathmandu Valley, and 12 Media partners — the entrepreneurial wind blew really hard this year.

The workshop covered various topics related to entrepreneurship, such as ideation, validation, marketing, market STP finance, legal aspects, and social impact. The participants learned from the real-life stories and challenges of successful entrepreneurs who have made a difference in their fields.

The winner of the Startup Idea Pitch Competition was team JOD, a social enterprise that empowers street shoe menders and provides them with opportunities for growth. The first runner-up was team Shabdamrit. The second runner-up was team The Map.

How did it start?

Curiouswe had the vision to create a college environment where students foster an entrepreneurial mindset and strive to make a positive impact on the environment and society. So, we conducted a 10-day long workshop on entrepreneurship a year ago which was successful but didn’t have enough participants. That workshop resulted in only 50 workshop participants, 15 entrepreneurs featured, and 15 Idea pitches.

The term entrepreneurship was new to many students at that time and this might be the reason why there were only a few students participating last year. So, the Curiouswe team decided to increase the marketing effort as well as the quality of the workshop.

This year Curiouswe had a strong belief and planned to make this workshop even bigger and better. They reduced the number of days from 10 days and made it 7 Days long followed by a startup Idea Pitch Competition on the final day. This was to make it more feasible for attendees.

I with a few of my team members carefully designed the syllabus for the workshop and targeted the biggest names in the entrepreneurship domain of Nepal to invite them as speakers. Because Curiouswe believed that "entrepreneurship can only be taught effectively if real entrepreneurs with experience teach it by adding their success and failure stories to it".

The workshop Speakers

As a result, Curiouswe’s Outreach Team successfully invited the biggest names to give sessions on each topic of the workshop. The speakers for the workshop were:

• Day 1 ( WTH is Entrepreneurship?): Ajit Bikram Shah , CEO of Lotus Holdings and Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Nepal
• Day 2 ( Product Development and Marketing ): Surendra Chaudhary, Regional Manager of WorldLink Communications
• Day 3 ( Market STP): Bigyan Gupta , CEO of Pedal Group Pvt. Ltd.
• Day 4 ( Management, Team & Operations ): Swastika Rajbhandari , Founder of Kaasthakala and Thriftbank
• Day 5 ( Financial Modelling & Terms ): Dolraj Poudel, CA with 15+ years of experience
• Day 6 ( Pitching, Fundraising & Product Launch): Santosh Pandey , Co-founder of Offering Happiness and Oho Cake

Startup Idea Pitch Competiton

After the workshop ended on July 24th, it was time for the participants to showcase their startup ideas in front of a panel of judges and an audience of entrepreneurs, investors, media, and students. Only 3 days were left. The Curiouswe team managed to onboard all the interested teams so amazingly that they even filtered out the 16 Best teams from 50+ ideas registered.

On this day there were 16 Ideas pitched by teams. It was the biggest get-together of entrepreneurs in Nepal where the biggest entrepreneurs motivated and inspired our youths with their stories and knowledge.

Judges

The judges for the pitch competition were:

• Shakti Golyan , Executive Director of Golyan Group
• Chirag Goyal , Executive Director of Goyal Group
• Pratik Kunwar , Founder of CEI, Scholar, and delegate speaker of One Young World
• Juna Mathema , Co-founder and Managing Director of Blitz Media Pvt. Ltd.
• Bigyan Gupta , Founder of Pedal Group Pvt. Ltd.

Speakers for Panel Discussion:

The event also featured a panel discussion with three entrepreneurs who shared their insights on the current state and future prospects of entrepreneurship in Nepal. The panelists were:

• Niraj Kafle , Co-Founder of Offering Happiness
• Hemant Puranik , CEO of IME Motors Pvt. Ltd. and IME Electric Pvt. Ltd.
• Resta Jha , Executive Chairman of KFA

Guest Speakers:

The event was graced by the presence of several guest speakers who inspired and motivated the participants with their words of wisdom and encouragement. The guest speakers were:

• Chiri Babu Maharjan, Mayor of Lalitpur Metropolitan City
• Pawan Golyan , Chairman of Golyan Group
• Kiran Timsina , Co-founder of UG Cakes and Urban Girls
• Dr. Santosh Upadhyay, Mr. Nepal, and TV Host
• Evana Manandhar , Co-founder of AYO User
• Prof. Dr. Shashidhar Ram Joshi — Dean of IOE
• Gaurav Bhattarai Jare — Vice-President of Free Student Union, IOE Pulchowk Campus

The Dream Come True

The dream Curiouswe team had came true. The biggest entrepreneurs joined the workshop and final event and participants were very satisfied with the knowledge that was delivered by their keynote speakers and guests.

And what more? The result was astounding: the number of participants increased by 400% compared to last year. The event also received wide media coverage and positive feedback from the attendees. It was a huge success for the Curiouswe team.

Curiouswe Team

It would not be possible without the hard work of each and every team member of the Curiouswe team.

Core Team

• Vikrant Panjiyar ( Me ), Founder and President
• SAKET CHAUDHARY , Co-founder and Vice President
• Sovit Kumar Karn , Outreach Manager
• Sonali Shah, Human Resource Manager
• Divyanshu Rai , Technical Manager
• Shristi Thapa Magar, Content Lead
• Aryan Ray, Event Manager
• Jyoti Gupta , Marketing Manager
• Krishant Timilsina , Sponsorship Manager
• Sujal Poudel , Videographer and Editor
• Ashok khatri — Social Media Manager
• Sunita Khadka — Media Manager
• Abhinash Ghimire — Participant Coordinator
• Bikendra Sharma — Graphics Designer
• Sarina Budhathoki — Public Relation Manager
• Shiv Narayan Singh — Logistic Manager
• Jeevan Koiri — Production Lead
• Samikshya Nepal — Moderator
• Sarisma Basnet — Moderator
• Priyanka Kaushik Chhetri — Moderator
• Sumnima Sharma — Moderator

Volunteers

• Santosh Sah
• Arjun Timsina
• Balmiki Sah Gupta
• Bikash Rauniyar
• Bishnu Dev Mandal
• Subhasis Karki
• Pragya Sapkota
• Neema Poudel
• Pragya Gautam
• Simran Gupta

I will come back with another article to explain in detail how I managed the operations, team, and execution of the event. I will update the link here.