In a market full of international products, local brands are often ignored. Because being not heard of by most of the people, it’s hard to explain to people about the local products. As a result, people choose international goods over the local ones. In last years, many local brands have come in the market.

My City talked to some of them. Here are the results: 

Riding safely with Alpha Riding Gear 

Do you love riding motorcycles? If you do and in case you are looking for riding gears, ALPHA Riding Gear is the perfect brand to go for. The brand sells gears that riders require while riding a motorcycle. Founded by Sandeep Shrestha in 2015, the brand welcomed Sabin Karanjit as one of the co-founders and Vijay Shahi as an investor. Currently, ALPHA Riding Gear is located at Hotel Potala Tourist Home, Tridevi Marg, Thamel.

Story behind initiation
“The story of the brand ALPHA comes with an idea of providing the best protective gears for the Nepalese riders,” says Shrestha. Riding in jackets had always been a cool thing for Shrestha. However, he laments that there were no platforms that provided riding jackets in Nepal. After he went to France for his studies, he was fascinated by the riders there. He wanted to bring something to Nepal that was not available then.  

He shared, “The motorcycle market in Nepal was booming and so were the accidents caused by riding motorcycles. That demanded more protection and safety for the riders. As the jackets in our market are mostly of lesser quality, and the genuine brands are too expensive, I saw the need for a local ‘riding gear’ brand which could provide international quality gears at a reasonable price. So, as soon as I returned back to Nepal from France, along with the help of my two childhood friends: Sabin Karanjit and Vijay Shahi, we started ALPHA Riding Gear.”

Hurdles
It has been 4 years since the inception of the brand. Despite some upgrades, the company also faces lots of challenges.  According to Shrestha, dealing with people who don’t know anything about riding gears is his biggest pain. Most of the people believe riding gears are for people who ride fast and are young. However, accidents can happen anytime. The gears are for everyone; be it youngsters or adults. He added, “Most of the riders consider riding gears to be only for the racers or the bikers who mostly ride big bikes and ride very fast.” As the brand’s main motive is to reduce road accidents, the co-founder shared that everybody buying the product don’t wear them on a daily basis. 

Goals
As the society is comprised of traditional mindset people, some riders are not privileged by the products because of the definition of the society toward people who wear gears. They call them ‘tyape’, ‘jagaltey’ and so on. Hence, accidents happen. 
Despite the challenges that the brand faces, ALPHA Riding Gear is hopeful the number of accidents on the street will decline if all people wear safety gears. Sharing their goal, Shrestha said, “Our future goal is to provide better quality and a variety of products suitable for riders of all kinds. We would also like to see 100% riders wear our gears; not only in the streets of Kathmandu Valley but all across Nepal.” 

Business for a Noble cause: Anthropose

Imagine the feeling of seeing the world with your eyes after being blind. It’s amazing, isn’t it? One thing is sure; it will be beautiful to capture the beauty of the world.  Since people with cataract are mostly from the rural areas, majority of them cannot afford the fees for the treatment. As the number of people with cataract is on the rise, brands like Anthropose exist in the market. Founded by Suraj Shrestha in 2014, Anthropose’s motive has always been giving cataract treatment to the people in the rural areas and also to the people who cannot afford the treatment. 

According to Comilina Bajracharya, Marketing Strategist, Anthropose Pvt. Ltd, “For every 10 pairs of Anthropose eyewear sold, the company funds one cataract surgery or remedial courses in rural Nepal. While providing eyewear protection, comfort and style by crafting high quality eyewear, we also create a platform for communities to unite together to give the gift of vision and help struggling public school students shore up their fundamentals. Because we, as a company believe that when community comes together and with the power of ‘WE’, we can change the status-quo.”
  
Story behind initiation  
Suraj Shrestha, founder, came across a number of social problems widespread in the society during his journey. Since most of the problems were related to eye health care system in Nepal, Shrestha thought something needs to be changed. Comilina said, “The irony is despite having the best facility of cataract surgery available in the country, majority of the people did not have accessibility. We wanted to change this. We wanted to bridge the gap between this problem and the solution that we had.” 

Thanks to their business model, they have restored the vision of 411 people. They have collaborated with Tilganga Eye Hospital since 2014.

According to Bajracharya, “Initially we started with solving the problems of cataract. But this year onwards, we are also funding the remedial courses of weak students studying in public schools in rural Nepal to strengthen their foundations in primary subjects like Nepali and Maths.”

Hurdles
People’s hesitation toward the purchase is the main challenge. “We can see that people are gradually getting brand conscious. Not everyone in the market is conscious, but there are some. Most people hesitate to make a purchase because of the lack of product knowledge. Since our product’s price range from Rs 3899 to 6199, people hesitate to make purchase, However, we are working towards making our products more economical,” added Bajracharya

Goals
Regardless of the hurdles, they prepare to bring the change by themselves. Speaking more, Bajracharya said, “We plan on changing lives of more people by funding more cataract surgeries and remedial courses in rural Nepal by providing quality and new designs frames at a reasonable price for our customers. Because we, as a company alone cannot do this, we, as a community can only make this possible. This defines our tagline ‘Get.Give.Change’.”

‘Must Haves’ for every season

There was once a time when moms used to knit warm clothes like sweaters, gloves, shocks and more. Time has now changed and modern moms don’t have enough time to do the same. Most of the parents purchase commercial textiles for their children. However, there are some business ventures that are working to produce hand knitted winter clothes for all age groups. This venture has not just produced quality textile, it has also created employment opportunities among women. ‘Must Haves’ has been preserving the tradition of hand kitting. 

Story behind initiation 
Must Haves isa  Bangemudha based business venture founded by Neiha Joshi and Asmeet Malla in 2015. Neiha claimed that the idea was proposed by her mother and aunt. Currently there are more than 35 women who gather at her house in Kalanki and knit, sharing of laughter and sorrow. 

Speaking about her inspiration to establish the business Joshi said, “I have grown watching my mother and aunts knit many beautiful hand knitted items from keyrings to panchos and from mufflers to sweaters. I always loved wearing them because it felt more warm in those hand-knitted knitwear than the machine made” she further revealed, “During my MBA, I started a pilot project and displayed beanies, keyrings, mufflers, hand warmers and neck warmers made by my mom. I displayed them in social media and wore them to college during winter. I received an overwhelming response after that. I then decided to register it as ‘Must Haves’ in 2015 and started working on the idea with my mom and aunt on it from then.” 

Hurdles
No matter how big your ideas are or how you invest, hurdles will always test your patience in startups. Joshi also faced numerous challenges during her entrepreneurial journey. Finding the right material suitable for the products was the biggest problem that she faced during her initial phase. However, finding the right channel to connect to the costumers is the biggest problem that she faced. The venture solved the problem by delivering their products directly to the costumers. Now her venture is moving smoothly and creating a buzz among youngsters. Her products are priced on a range of RS 250 up to RS 4500, depending on the products. 

Goals
Every entrepreneur wants to expand their venture into a brand and maximize profits. But Joshi has a different plan. When we asked Joshi about her future plans she replied, “Our plans is to promote Nepali handmade products locally and globally while expanding our team accordingly.” 

Clothing with a Nepali touch: Shibori Nepal

Shibori Nepal is a Nepali clothing brand established in January 2017. The venture officially started its journey after three months of trial experience. The venture was first started as an online company and it is still the core of the company. Recently, they have signed to display their products at a concept store at Jhamsikhel:  The Pop-Up Store. This decision can change their market as they can build access with costumers easily. 

The products of Shibori Nepal are sold from Rs 750 to Rs 5000. The products are delivered all across Nepal without delivery charge.  The venture is gaining momentum and also has started collecting lots of orders from countries like USA and Australia They use DHL or EMS to deliver their products, which will reach the clients in 3-7 business days. 

Story behind initiation
The concept of the venture kicked off in KC’s mind with the idea of creating a household brand in Nepal, where people could proudly wear local products. “Therefore, we have only focused on hand-made clothes for everyone. We also custom make clothes in different colors and designs the clients want. I think that is one of the important factors that has helped us to slowly penetrate the market and become a household name. Be it summer or winter, we try to make it international standard and locally accessible,” shared KC. 

Hurdles
Every business comes with challenges and Shibori Nepal try to overcome them with zeal and enthusiasm. There are both internal and external barriers; the major one being people actually coming to the factory or calling them to know how we actually work. “This morning, we got a call asking for our designers to offer something in return of the insider information. Well, shocking and amazing! Maybe it’s time for all of us to be creative and try to do different things and encourage each other to build a better Nepal,” said KC

Goals
The venture is intending to learn with each step taken and make ‘Made in Nepal’ at par with the international standards. Likewise, the founders want to come up with much better and bigger collection each summer and winter. We want be a local brand with international name. 

PIGS: Adding new dimensions in Arts

‘PIGS’ literally does not mean the animal itself. Instead, it is a Mahalaxmisthan based venture of 2 artists, Ismriti Purja and Sharave Gurung. They spelled their name and surname’s initiateves backwards and got the name: Pigs.

PIGS is run by just the two of them and they have transformed their passion into a venture. They create murals, graffiti’s on restaurants, streets, customize bikes and helmets. They also work on projects assigned by their clients. 
“Our clients are usually schools and restaurants, Mostly, customers approach us through our social media pages: ‘Pigs’ on Facebook and ‘art pigs’ on Instagram,” says Gurung. Both of the owners basically look after the marketing and make the art by themselves. 

Story behind initiation 
Founders were batch mates in high school. After completing A levels in 2012, they started a venture called Piston Motorcycle Club, whereby, they would deal only with Royal Enfield Bikes. The venture consists of four partners. All of them are family members. However, things did not go well. They failed terribly and as teenagers and were devastated by the loss. They felt like giving up. But the librarian from King’s College (Reshma Dangol) gave them an idea to start a venture on art, since both of them were passionate about it. Thereafter, they also talked to their teachers about it and Saurav Satyal, their mentor, helped them established their own company: PIGS. Thus, PIGS was established in 2014 by Ismriti Purja and Sharave Gurung. 

Hurdles 
“We did face a lot of challenges when we started PIGS. We would approach cafés for art with new concepts. But they would normally deny since we had nothing on our portfolio. Despite many let downs, we did not stop. We created wall arts on our own house-walls and built our portfolios. Now we had something for display to our potential clients back then. Soon, a café from Bouddha approached us. Clients would always delay our payments or pay us less than what we would ask for because we were new in the market. This made our relationship and desire for success stronger,” said Gurung 

“Even today, some clients either delay our payments or pay us short. We have come up a system of signing contracts before we start the work. So, the venture has made it mandatory to have an agreement about terms and conditions between both parties. Only then will the work start,” adds Purja.

Goals
The duo is planning to break the stereotype that art doesn’t have a great scope in Nepal too. Some might appreciate art whereas others might not. The duo is also aiming to create more arts in the coming years. In addition, they are working on patents on some of their signature and transfer them to other mediums.