Digital solutions to every day problems in Nepal

Ideas for the IT Entrepreneurs

I recently read the essay by Paul Graham called “How to come up with Startup Ideas” and it got me thinking about how his logic can be used to come up with solutions for every day problems we have in Nepal.

We in Nepal have so so many problems. Despite technology being omni-present and accessible, we hardly use it as a means of problem solving and rather succumb to the way the things are.

In the following article, I list 4 problems that I think technology can solve and someone should make a startup out of it.

1. An online store that competes with prices as cheap or even cheaper than the local stores.

I know couple of online stores that have existed since very beginning. Muncha.com is one of the earliest and the big chain of supermarket Bhatbhateni also opened its online store recently. Muncha focusses mostly on foreign customers and the goods are priced accordingly. Bhatbhateni on the other hand looks more like a web store just for namesake purposes.

The idea here is to be inspired by Amazon. Forget making large amount of profit for now, and instead at the beginning, get people to use digital technology to do shopping. If I want to know the price of a book or an electronic device or a shoe, I know I can get a very competitive price from Amazon. And that is why I use it. It then comes with it, the added benefits of buyers protection, easy return, timely delivery etc.

With the benefit of being online and not having to have a physical store, surely a business minded person with a digital sense can get huge advantage here. Making the products cheaper even only by a fraction goes a long way to get users’ attention. Building trust comes later. People suffer a lot already with varying prices between many stores for the same goods. Digital technology should give users a store they can trust to and communicate with.

2. Online payment.

When someone pays someone else, it is usually for something that was done. It translate to some form of activity, and as such the more the money moves around, more active people are. Physical money is a big hassle. One has to carry it, take it out from ATM machine, then meet this other person and hand it over.

Digital payment is faster payment, secure payment. The more easily payments happen, more likely are people to be engage in some form, thus more activity among people. People have a dark opinion about the future of economy in Nepal. Specially the younger generation has no zeal to dive into business. If only online payment is made possible, a lot of creativity will follow, new startups, new ideas and people willing to experiment.

This related to ‘the online store’ idea. Quick click, quick pay, quick getting things done.

Heck, I cannot even pay ‘easily’ to my ISP in Nepal. Right now, I have to ‘login’ to bank, remember a cryptic pin, remember how much I have to pay, send the money to right account, and repeat it every month. Sigh! Can’t we do it with one click, set the setting to monthly recurring payment like paypal and forget it? Same goes for paying telephone bills, other house hold utilities etc. I would gladly even upgrade my internet, had it been possible to do it online. Well…

The hard problem here is, is there really no alternative to blankly staring at our lame government and wishing for a miracle. I certainly thing there is a big opportunity here. Things like M-peso, digital currency are few I can think of and there should be plenty others.

3) Digital Bus ticket services

I was used to riding in a ‘micro’ bus. Although it is “micro” in size, it is amazing how many people can be shoved into one. And after each ride, there is always a price negotiation. Sometimes it costs 20Rs and other times it costs 22Rs just because there is no standard as to how much to pay for a given distance. I usually ignore arguing about the extra 2Rs to avoid any kind of ugly argument, but not everyone shares my opinion and once in a while there goes arises an interesting argument between people and the ticket collector.

I have been told that things are much better. With the introduction of Sajha Yatayat, prices have been standardized and these busses offer a ride much a lot of drama, fortunately I hope.

Things that can be improved from the top of my head would be

a) Predicting time schedule of arrival and departure of bus at any given stop. This results in less time loss and more peace of mind to travellers.

b) Online tickets for a given ride, have weekly, monthly tickets reducing hassle to transact all the time.

c) Recording bus locations online so a data can be collected to study traffic patterns. Recording data is the first step in improving traffic. Students from Technical Universities can be engaged in further research with this data.

Services can only improve with technology. People will get fair prices and fair services. Service operators get proper feedback.

4) Long distance bus routes and tickets online

Nepal being a traveller’s paradise, it is strange we still have to call travel operators to know bus prices from going from one place to another. If the information is available, why isn’t it online yet?

But to start with, the basic question would be “What difference does it make?”

I for one have a traveling spirit. I would like to go from east to west, from north to south. Having lived in Nepal for 25 years, not knowing how long it would take, what traveling options I had and which route I would be going resulted in lack of planning that caused further lack of motivation.

Planning is an important step in traveling. Most people in the valley always remain in the safe security of the valley because going anywhere else comes with so much uncertainty. It doesn’t have to be. Get this online, make it possible for people to know what transport services are there, how much it costs, how long it takes, when does the busses depart etc. Further, make online reservations and booking possible. Bus services are happy because they sell tickets faster and reliable. People are happy because everything is transparent, easy to understand and available by the click on the mouse.

If my mother finds comfort in using facebook only after few weeks of using it, I am sure it wouldn’t be hard given the right set of tools that we fix most of the problems mentioned above.

I am curious to know about other problems that have easier solutions the digital way.