Mandil
Pradhan is the CEO and the
Web-Director of PartyNepal.com.
He has been working as a free-lance
web designer since the turn of the
new millennium. This self taught web
designer currently maintains nine
out of twenty-one website he has designed.
Beside web designing, Mandil is also
one of the very few Motorcycle Stunt
Riders in Nepal. He successfully participated
in the Biker's Day Out 2002, organized
by Vibes Entertainment in association
with Wave Magazine on 14/15 April,
and returned home with a heavy trophy.
As for the future, he intends to go
to Glion Hotel School to earn a degree
in Food & Wine, and Restaurant
Operations.
During last month I
had chance to interview him. In the
interview, he talked about his experience
with PartyNepal.com. Please email
any comments at info@nepalnet.net
Q.
What is the story behind the beginning
of Partynepal.com?
Mandil
Pradhan:
I had first met Robin
in February 2003 at a salsa-party,
and later he contacted me to make
a website for an event management
company that he owned. While we discussed
about how to go about that website,
he asked me how much I was going to
charge him. My charges were pretty
high, so he told me that he owned
a domain called partynepal.com with
50 MB webspace, and that he’d
exchange the domain in return for
my service. It was right then that
the idea of “Nepal’s only
clubbing and partying portal”
struck me. Robin had such an idea
in mind when he bought the domain
but hadn’t been able to implement
it. However, he was more inclined
towards promoting underground music.
So the domain was just lying in the
internet with just a front page graphic
on it for the past 1 year.
Robin
and I decided that it’d be much
better and easier if we worked together
in this new concept and we invited
2 other friends to join us but they
had to leave “the team”
even before the website was officially
launched Baishakh 1, 2060, April 14th
2003).
So, the basic idea
was to promote other people’s
events/parties and the bars/clubs
and charge them for doing so, and
for the party-goers, we’d be
a free guide to clubbing and partying.
With that idea, PartyNepal.com was
born.
However, later, a lot of people came
to us asking if we managed events
as well. Since Robin already had an
experience in that field (he had already
left his event management company
since PartyNepal.com required a lot
of his time), we took up their proposals.
Since then we have managed events
for other companies, and once in a
while, we do our own as well.
PartyNepal.com
initially was an amateur room-based
project, but within a month of our
existence, we got a few media exposure
here and there, and we became quite
popular in Kathmandu. That is when
we realized it was some serious business
that we were in, and gave our full
energy and time into it.
Q. On a personal
level, how were you first introduced
to world of web designing?
Mandil:
Honestly speaking, I
have never attended any computer institute,
nor did I ever regularly attend the
computer classes we had in school
where they taught us Microsoft Word
and Excel, and it was really boring.
I got my first computer
in winter of 1995. I had a mean machine
back then. A 486 DX2, 4 MB Ram, 630
MB Hard Drive, and Windows 95. It
was one of the latest computers then.
Ever since I got that computer, I
used to play around with it a lot
and I messed it up a lot of times.
In the beginning I used to take it
to the service center to have it repaired,
but once it started happening too
often, I was scared to let my mom
know that the computer had broken
down again. Then I started exploring
with the machine, and slowly I started
fixing the problems myself, from software
to hardware.
In
summer 1998, I got my internet connection,
and I started to surf the net. The
things that they had on the internet
really fascinated me. Then, I decided
I should give it a shot in trying
to make pages similar to the ones
I had seen. I registered for a free
website on yahoo/geocities. The first
page I ever made was through a geocities
web-page wizard A few weeks later
I got my first copy of Microsoft Frontpage.
I figured out that this software was
extremely easy and to make a website
was a piece of cake now. I made a
website in frontpage and uploaded
it to my geocities web space and started
showing off to everyone about this
website I had. After about 6 months,
I showed my website to a friend who
had been taking web designing lessons,
and he started laughing at it saying
how crappy the website was. He taught
me a few tips ad tricks for about
an hour, and on my way back home,
I picked up a few books about web-designing
from my computer engineer uncle and
started learning. It took me nearly
3 months to learn and come up with
a page that totally amazed that friend.
Of course, there were a few stolen
scripts here and there, but the basic
theme and designing was my own. I
started building on that website,
and after a few months, I launched
www.mandil.com.np. After that I started
getting a few projects from my relatives
and friends. That is how I started
off with making websites. So far,
it has been a learning process, and
I am still learning.
Q. Are you
planning on any major changes for
the Partynepal.com in near future?
Mandil:
As for the near future,
I don’t see any particular big
changes happening to PartyNepal.com.
Like I said, from a room-based project,
it has become a full time business
for Robin and I. We have taken up
event management and I totally changed
the structure and design of the website
once already. Now, we are hoping to
attract advertisers (we got our first
banner advertiser last week) and get
the clubs and bars to be our full-time
affiliations by listing with us, so
that we can invest more into PartyNepal.com.
There will be a time when we will
need to hire a few other staffs, but
so far, Robin and I, with a lot of
help from 2 friends (Bhushan Thapa
and Susan Sellars) have been able
to run the company efficiently.
Q. Beside Partynepal.com,
what else can we expect from you and
your team in the future?
Mandil:
PartyNepal.com
is the main priority for me at present.
However, I have been working as a
freelancer now as well. Since the
inception of PartyNepal.com, I have
already made 6 websites for other
companies, and I am working on one
more right now. PartyNepal.com has
helped me get a lot of other designing
jobs, and I have now been recognized
as a professional web-designer.
Robin,
Bhushan and I have been looking into
the prospect of starting a designing
house, where we do all kinds of designing
including web-development (web hosting
and designing), paper designing (advertisement,
party-posters/invitation, etc.), video
editing, printing, etc. But these
are only talks, nothing is certain
yet.
Q. Any suggestion
you might have to other aspiring web
designers?
Mandil:
You make me sound like
a web-guru, hehehe. Like I said before,
I am still in a learning process.
A great design comes
from defining a singular theme and
supporting it consistently, and clearly.
The theme is the heart of a design.
It is the emotional center that when
communicated will resonate deeply
and lead to a successful project.
Web-designing
is a based more on your creativity
than your knowledge. Of course, the
basics have to be there, but its how
well and creatively you think that
matters in the end. No one can teach
you to think in a certain way, and
no one can teach you how to come up
with creative concepts. It’s
about developing your imagination
and putting it up in the screen.
Some of the website
designed by Mandil Pradhan
www.partynepal.com
www.mandil.com.np
www.aceapartment.com
www.paw.com.np
www.vishwokastha.com.np
www.himalayanjava.com.np
www.askmenepal.com
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