Tech Communities in Nepal Come Together
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A day after the World Startup Report event at King’s College, another remarkable event was organized by Sparrow SMS in collaboration with Biruwa Ventures. The event organized on 28thof April at Baber Mahal Revisited was aimed at bringing the people from tech world in Nepal at a single venue for the exchange of knowledge and information and also to present an overall picture of tech culture in Nepal.
For everyone who wondered what the IT scene in Kathmandu looks like, this first Tech Mashup showed that there are many more players in the arena than one would assume and there is much more innovation coming up than one would expect. The first Tech Mashup introduced 15 start-up ventures and developer communities to a crowd of about 300 youngsters. Most of the guests were surprised and inspired by seeing these many like-minded tech enthusiasts ready to contribute their knowledge and skills in a sector that is often underestimated in Nepal. Companies like Grepsr.com, f1 soft and cloud factory showed that building a successful IT-based business is indeed possible here. The communities like Google Developers, Wikimedia, and the Open Source developers attracted bulks of potential supporters to their stalls as did Karkhana with their prototype robots.
The special guest of the evening was Bowie Gai, who is traveling to 36 cities in 29 countries to explore the tech startup the scene and report about it on www.startupreport.com. The Silicon Valley entrepreneur was busy answering an abundance of questions and connecting with ambitious Geeks. The overwhelming number of participants showed the huge interest in events like this. As Abhinab Basnyat of Biruwa Ventures puts it, “This event came at the right time. It is amazing to see how the sector has developed in the recent past. Now the need is to link the IT community up with management and marketing students so that all those proto-types get developed into actual products and businesses”. The organizers of Tech Mashup will certainly be up for the challenge to now also spark more networks even beyond the IT sector.
