4 ms·

Lessons from starting a dot com business in Nepal

21 points by r11t 16y ago

hga 16y ago
Interesting. And here's a couple of notes from a site that tracks business regulations: http://www.doingbusiness.org/economyrankings/ http://www.doingbusiness.org/economyrankings/ While Nepal doesn't rank highly in terms of "Ease of Doing Business" it's better than e.g. Brazil and India. And like the author's experience, it's not too bad in terms of "Starting a Business", e.g. it's ranked on three down from Germany (why am I not surprised? :-).
- sbierwagen 16y ago
  Your comment is somewhat misleading. On that list, Nepal is ranked 123rd in ease of doing business, and 87th in starting a business.
  - hga 16y ago
    These are rankings compared to other nations, the scale is not linear. I made the comparisons to other well known nations to put its rankings into perspective. I don't know about ease of doing business, but the topic covered in the item, starting a business, shows that 87th doesn't seem to be all that bad. Part of their methodology (http://www.doingbusiness.org/MethodologySurveys/StartingBusiness.aspx http://www.doingbusiness.org/MethodologySurveys/StartingBusi...) includes per capita income; overall Nepal is poor enough that that alone is probably dragging it down somewhat.
    - sbierwagen 16y ago
      Of course it's not linear, it's a ranking. I made no claims as to objective truth, after all, the list is compiled by the World Bank, and ignores any consideration other than the cost of doing business. And to put it into additional perspective, some of Nepal's neighbors on the EODB list are the Russian Federation and Nigeria. The thrust of the article was that if you are Nepalese, starting a company in your home country is not as bad as you would expect, but the data would seem to indicate that it would be utter folly for a foreigner to do so.
sbierwagen 16y ago
Sounds like he depends on international cloud services, which is ominous for a business in a landlocked country bordered by two nations which practice extensive internet censorship. The endemic corruption and two coups in the last five years aren't reassuring, either.

21 points by r11t 16y ago

hga 16y ago

Interesting. And here's a couple of notes from a site that tracks business regulations: http://www.doingbusiness.org/economyrankings/ http://www.doingbusiness.org/economyrankings/ While Nepal doesn't rank highly in terms of "Ease of Doing Business" it's better than e.g. Brazil and India. And like the author's experience, it's not too bad in terms of "Starting a Business", e.g. it's ranked on three down from Germany (why am I not surprised? :-).

sbierwagen 16y ago
Your comment is somewhat misleading. On that list, Nepal is ranked 123rd in ease of doing business, and 87th in starting a business.
- hga 16y ago
  These are rankings compared to other nations, the scale is not linear. I made the comparisons to other well known nations to put its rankings into perspective. I don't know about ease of doing business, but the topic covered in the item, starting a business, shows that 87th doesn't seem to be all that bad. Part of their methodology (http://www.doingbusiness.org/MethodologySurveys/StartingBusiness.aspx http://www.doingbusiness.org/MethodologySurveys/StartingBusi...) includes per capita income; overall Nepal is poor enough that that alone is probably dragging it down somewhat.
  - sbierwagen 16y ago
    Of course it's not linear, it's a ranking. I made no claims as to objective truth, after all, the list is compiled by the World Bank, and ignores any consideration other than the cost of doing business. And to put it into additional perspective, some of Nepal's neighbors on the EODB list are the Russian Federation and Nigeria. The thrust of the article was that if you are Nepalese, starting a company in your home country is not as bad as you would expect, but the data would seem to indicate that it would be utter folly for a foreigner to do so.

sbierwagen 16y ago

Sounds like he depends on international cloud services, which is ominous for a business in a landlocked country bordered by two nations which practice extensive internet censorship. The endemic corruption and two coups in the last five years aren't reassuring, either.