Krishna Sunuwar

Few months back, I posted two blogs ‘IT Business and Nepal…‘ and ‘Growing Together‘. Motive behind both was to express concern about growth and saturation of Nepalese IT profession (or business). There is same motive behind forming geeky-talk group (at least in some way in long run, I’ll clarify it below). Geeky-talk is closed group form by those so called first generation IT professionals (spent 10 years in this business).

Personally I have concluded that I reached in saturation point of my career. I assume it’s no difference for those who already spent 10 years in this field. If you notice, it’s good. If you haven’t, it’s high time to start thinking. If you realized we reached saturation point, question is ‘so what is next?’. Industry is still pretty small and immature in the country.

Looking around, answer I got is entrepreneurship. Lying between two giant power, China and India (two of BRIC – google it), entrepreneurship seems to be right choice. But we need to think little further. China and India stand and population power (in bigger scope), but we don’t. We never ever can build outsourcing hub like India where one single company like Infosys employ more than hundred thousand. We also never can build competent firm like Baidu or Alibaba like in China.

We can look Israel or Indonesia. In Israel Tech entrepreneurs build solutions/product that solves global issues where as Indonesian build solutions that focus domestic users. Indonesia enjoys its massive domestic internet users, which is 20-30 million. In Nepal, we have some 500 thousands internet users, which is one third of Israel.

Scenario is nearly same with Israel in terms of consumers. But there are lot differences (google about Israel Tech Culture). But, still, we may imitate some form of Israel’s entrepreneurship culture. We need to be lesser ambitious and more optimistic. We can’t build company like Israel where VC from Silicon Valley invest hundreds million, neither we are technologically competent. But we still can build company using available resources which sales hundreds thousands (may not be hundreds millions). This will gives start-up mileage in our Tech Industry. This is my Teachy Dream.

So, answer of ‘what after saturation?’ is that we should be able to sale brain along with labor. Besides programming custom code on demand basis, we should be able to sale solutions/products. This is what going helps us to overcome from growth saturation. We should build group strength by helping each-other. We should share experiences, problem, solutions – crack ideas, share and taste them. This is what exactly vision of geeky-talk.

By referring Israel tech culture, I wanted to stress on innovation (not just about entrepreneurship). We need our people to become competent on technology, marketing, product, sales, account, interpersonal, presentation, communication, finance and so on. I believe ‘walkathon’ (I would name it ‘walkathon’ because we talk and walk, but we don’t necessarily hack) program in geeky-talk should be instrumental in enhancing such capacity. In ‘walkathon’, we talk, discuss brainstorm not just about technology (security, architecture, standard) aspect of product but marketing, sales, demand and competitor. This will have lot of advantages*, 1) We learn about product, 2) We developed analytical skill, 3) We learn to work in group, 4) We made publicity (we going post research finding in blog), 5)We develop marketing sales skill. I believe these activities ultimately enhance individual entrepreneurial skill. One of major criteria ‘walkathon’ to succeed is that it has to be attractive. So to make it attractive, event should fun/interesting, less burden.

‘Walkathon’ is of many (of course major) program carried by Geeky-Talk. There’s lot other activities like sharing ideas, experience, problems and finding solutions within group, even personal consulting to member.

*if you see more advantage, please suggest through comment box below.

Looking back history, IT business as solution provider boosted in 2010 although there were few firms which dealt with training, selling hardware and build software. However this is my personal view, not supported by any data/fact. Before 2001, there were institutes which used to conduct short term training courses, but not full fledged academic degrees. I still remember myself, in 1999 walking street of Bagbazar and Putalisadak to find best training institute which can supplement academic degree. Scenario has been changed and now, almost 4500 IT undergrads produced every year in the country.

When we talk about the IT industry, most businesses are to related IT services, few are product basis and very few might be in consultancy. I would classify service as designing/developing websites, customizing open source software and building one-time usable application such companies are IT Offshore, Websearch Professionals, ebPearls (many to name). Companies which build flagship product and sale them on license basis comes under Product Basis – D2Hwakeye, Javra, Swastic are few to take example. There also some companies who actually falls on both category – e.g. F1Soft. I am not sure whether company who do IT consulting business actually exists, but I image it should be. Another way of categorizing IT business can be in terms of where they sell (in terms of their market). For now, I would broadly divide into two – outside country (can be said offshore), inside country.

I have very less chance to interact with people from product-basis companies. People in service-basis business doing awesome and are equally competent with their counterparts from those in developed countries (Europe or USA). Major chunk of business is focused on customizing modules, templates, extensions and writing hacking code to get demanded functionalities. In other way, it is a responsive nature of service, they demand we act.

Should people in this business worry about its business? There is comment of being reached in saturate point. I think people in this business should be happy (not worry), happy to explore opportunities. As I said, it is responsive business, why not take chance to be initiative. It is people in the business who innovate industry. By saying people I am pointing to designers, programmers, engineers, marketers, project managers and founders (no doubt). If we see open source business model, it is more profitable in giving. Best thing about this model is giving is initiation. Most of time initiation is innovation. Open source is about giving, not only about taking. Questions arise, will such business model (building templates, module, extensions selling or giving for free) work? It will defiantly work because it worked globally and growing in multiple fold. Their remains challenges on understanding need of people and fear of getting sold those modules. Global industry experts suggest to build medicine or pain killer, not vitamin. So new challenges for people in the business identifying pain killer, medicine and vitamin.