Sanam Krishna Shrestha:
Mr. S. K. Shrestha is the Director,
Marketing of Avenues Nepal Pvt. Ltd.
He has a BBA degree plus Diploma in
Business Computing and more 10 years
of experience in the computer field
especially in database. He has also
a good managerial experience for running
a business house. He had worked for
Asianart.com and Websoft International
for 4 years as Business/Office Manager.
He is also well experienced in web/internet
marketing.
Gyanesh Man
Chitrakar:
Mr. G. M. Chitrakar is an Electrical
Engineer, but he has worked in the
computer field since the beginning
of his career. He is the Director,
Development of Avenues Nepal Pvt.
Ltd. He had worked for the National
Computer Centre in the past and also
worked for Asianart.com / Websoft
International for 4 years as Web Programmer.
He has an extensive Web Programming
experience for the last 4 years and
Database Programming for more than
10 years.
Anup
Narsingh Amatya:
Mr. A. N. Amatya is the Managing Director
of Avenues Nepal Pvt. Ltd. He has
an MBA Degree (Finance) from UK University
and is the Finance and Management
Person of the company. He was Deputy
Head of Operations for nearly two
years at Nepal Indosuez Bank Ltd.,
a subsidiary of French Multinational
Bank, Credit Agricole Indosuez .
All of the three are
founding partners of Avenues Nepal
Pvt. Ltd which runs NepalMatrimonial.com.
Avenues Nepal Pvt. Ltd. is a new eCommerce
company established on 30th Sept 2003
as per the Company Act of Nepal and
our Company Registration No. is 25359/060/61.
During last week I had chance to interview
them. In the interview, they talked
about their experience with NepalMatrimonial.com.
Please email any comments at info@nepalnet.net
Q. What
lead to the start of nepalmatrimonial.com?
Sanam,
Gyanesh & Anup:
 The
thought of developing a matrimonial
site popped up on our mind when many
of our friends who were abroad and
residing in Nepal, requested us to
find a suitable match for their marriage
in various occasions. In the year
2000, we had in mind of developing
a matrimonial or dating site for Nepal
(for Nepalese community scattered
worldwide.) We had not seen such a
genuine website for this purpose in
the past. So, in the year 2003, we
researched for designing a matrimonial
website and finally developed and
launched it on 16 November 2003.
Q. Being a new website, what challenges
are you and your group facing to promote,
maintain and further develop the website?
How are you dealing with those challenges?
Sanam,
Gyanesh & Anup:
We are facing lots of
challenges at present:
 First
is Finance. In Nepal, we do not have
Venture Capital concept to promote
new but potentially sound Business
Ideas. All of the Banks or the Financial
Institutions require Collateral in
order to sanction loans. Next is Time
for devoting ourselves in maintaining
and further development of our website
because of the lack of enough funding.
Till now, we have been providing this
service free of cost, but very soon
we will be charging a minimal fee
to sustain the company. We are confident
that in the near future, we will get
the return for our work.
Regarding promotion,
we have invested for placing a banner
ad in the Nepalnews.com and using
free site submission to some of the
search engines. Presently, we cannot
invest in ad words of Google or Overture
or MSN. Whatever we are doing is making
our site search engine friendly and
adding relevant information on our
site. In the near future we will also
place advertisement of NepalMatrimonial.com
on national dailies and some Nepali
newspapers and magazines which are
distributed outside Nepal.
 A
major problem we are facing is that
here in Nepal we do not have enough
rules and regulations for businesses
based on the internet. We have read
that our government is working on
it. Next, we do not have any financial
institutions (especially banks) that
provide Merchant Accounts for eCommerce
and a Gateway for online payment processing.
Thus, we have to search
for outside Merchant Account Providers.
Many such providers do not want to
provide such accounts to new internet
commerce companies, especially in
our case, due to the lack of Cyber
Law in Nepal. We have just acquired
a Merchant Account with PaySystems.com,
a US based provider. However, we can
only charge International Credit Cards
with their gateway. We still have
problem charging credit cards Valid
in India and Nepal onlysince such
cards are not recognized internationally
and also due the lack of infrastructure
in our Banks and also the Convertible
Currency regulations of our country.
Q. Are there
any plans for major future service
or changes to the website?
Sanam,
Gyanesh & Anup:
We have many such plans
on our mind, one of them being to
gradually add additional features
and facilities in NepalMatrimonial.com
such as a Gift Shop.
Q. Beside this
website, has you or your group or
you done any other major websites?
Sanam,
Gyanesh & Anup:
Yes, we had worked for
Websoft International, a foreign owned
company in Nepal and also developed
JobsNepal.com and designed/maintained
the most popular Asian Art site Asianart.com.
But now, we are no longer associated
with Websoft and Asianart.com.
Q. Any last word and/or suggestions
you want to give to other Nepali Web
professionals?
Sanam,
Gyanesh & Anup:
First, you need to have
a goal/vision set on your mind and
next you have to acquire enough knowledge
about web designing, development and
web marketing as well as a keen entrepreneurial
flair. Finance also pays a major role
in this field due to high maintenance
cost of web hosting, advertisement,
skilled manpower, expensive equipment
to name a few. Finally, devotion and
patience is vital for developing a
successful website. We have seen many
websites developed by inexperienced
web programmers/designers for the
sake of curiosity but fade out due
to lack of proper knowledge in maintaining
and marketing the sites.
Q. Are any of
you guys married or will be needing
service of nepalmatrimonial.com soon?
:-)
Sanam,
Gyanesh & Anup:
All of us are married.
We wish we had launched NepalMatrimonial.com
earlier. :-)
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