Surath Giri's Blog

Dec 31, 2014

10 awesome books I read in 2014

December 31, 2014 Surath Giri— min read

I managed to read only 27 books as opposed to my lofty goal of reading at least 40 books this year. The solace, however, is in the fact that I managed to read some pretty amazing books. Long after I finished reading these books, the lessons are still etched on my mind. That is becoming a trend by the way. I mean, missing the target but reading some amazing books. Unlike the past years, this year however, I focused on reading Nepali language books.

Anyway, here are the 10 awesome books I read in 2014:

1. Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill
While reading this book I was constantly thinking, why the hell didn't I read this book earlier? This book is considered the father of motivational literature. I must say the book lives up to the hype. This book is not a get rich quick book though. It is about how letting yourself consumed by an idea or a passion can ultimately land you riches. It is about how our thoughts eventually manifest themselves in reality through our actions. If you are consumed by the idea of getting rich, you will get rich eventually if you persist enough. I think, this is among the few motivational books that I really liked and found insightful.

2. Delivering Happiness: A path to Profits, Passion and Purpose by Tony Hsieh

This is the story of Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, one of the most beloved companies in the world. Zappos sells shoes online but it is not what Zappos is famous for. Zappos has taken customer service to a whole new level. According to Hsieh, the main objective of his company is to deliver happiness, not just sell shoes. In the book, Hsieh recounts the journey of his life so far and how he ended up building Zappos. The story of his childhood ventures will surely bring a smile on your face and his ventures after growing up will teach you a handful of insights on what the tumultuous journey of an entrepreneur looks like and how to build a great company.

3.Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't by James C. Collins
The author with his research team analyzed 28 companies over the period of 5 years to determine what made companies leap from good to great. The author has derived common aspects of all those great companies. All of those companies had level 5 leadership, culture of discipline, used technology as accelerators. The concept of Stockdale Paradox (Being brutally honest with your shortcomings but optimist about the future) is extremely useful not only in business but in personal life as well.

4. Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson
It is the autobiography of Richard Branson, probably the most adventurous entrepreneur in the world, who, while not creating a billion dollar company, is busy attempting and setting world records. In this book, he recounts his journey since childhood and how he ended up creating 8 billion dollar companies from scratch. Need I say more?

5. Radha by Krishna Dharabasi
Krishna Dharabasi is one of the more creative Nepali writers out there. In this novel, Dharabasi has woven a tale that breaks the patriarchal storyline created by our religious texts and stories. Unlike in the religious scriptures, in this novel, Radha has been portrayed an independent woman fighting for her identify and respect. Dharabasi is right to portray the Mahabharat war as a war created by the egos of the elites where thousands of commoners died for nothing. Amazing book!

6. Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High Impact nonprofits by Leslie Crutchfield
This book is to non-profits what "Good to Great" is to for-profits. The authors conducted a research among the most effective non-profit organizations in the world to find out the common things among them. Like, Good to Great, this book also have several very good lessons, which if applied, can take your non-profit organization and the cause it champions to newer heights. I think every Nepali NGO personnel should read this book as they seem to have understood none of these lessons.

7. An American Life by Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan lived an amazing life. Coming from a humble beginning, he started his career as a sports commentator and later became a very successful Hollywood actor of his time. Then after retiring from the career, he started working as a salesperson for General Electric which ultimately became a platform for him to start a political career. His political career started as the Governor of California and ended up as one of the most popular American presidents in recent history. In this memoir, 'The Great Communicator" tells about all the twists and turns in his life. He has also shared about the rationale behind the decisions he made as a president and how he contributed in ending the cold war.

8.Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang
If you want to read only one book out of my list, please read this one. This is the story of three generations of women in China. The author's grandmother lived in the times of feudal lords where women were treated like dirt, her mother lived in the times of communist revolution and Chang grew up under the rule of Mao. The author provides the readers a window to the life of commoners under Mao's China, so called paradise of the peasants and workers. The book should be read by every Nepalese, especially those who dream of establishing a Mao's paradise in Nepal.

9. Kamalari Dekhi Sabhasad Samma by Shanta Chaudhari
Shanta Chaudhari, who rose from the life of a modern slave into the position of a parliamentarian, is truly an inspirational figure. In this book, she recounts her unlikely journey full of struggles and hurdles. Her life if a testament that if a person wants, he or she can overcome any barrier and achieve success, provided that they are passionate enough and persistent enough.

10. The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything by Guy Kawasaki
This is a straight-forward, no nonsense book for any aspiring entrepreneur to help them start their enterprise right away. The author provides practical tips and tricks for starting up along with lessons to keep in mind after that. One of the tips he provides in the book is start your company's name with earlier letters in the alphabet so that you get first listing in any event or publications. Another suggestion that I liked is: forget about the mission statement, have a mantra instead. There are such lessons in every page of the book. A must read for any aspiring entrepreneur.

Well, that is my list. What do you think about it? Have you read any of these books? If yes, do share your thoughts in the comments below.

Youth and Entrepreneurship in Nepal: My Radio Interview

November 26, 2014 Surath Giri— min read

On November 15, I was invited to Radio Rajdhani 100.6 Mhz's program Leo in Change to talk about the prospects and challenges about youth entrepreneurship in the context of Nepal. Below is the recording of the radio interview. Leo in Change is run by Leo Club of Kathmandu Central Town and is focused towards young audience. Hence, the informal language and the discussion format. Please skip the first one and a half minute as there is a song playing on. If you have any comments or questions, please let me know in the comment section below.

Out of Country but Out of Poverty

October 31, 2014 Surath Giri— min read

I have recently started writing for The Global Entrepreneur which is Sweden based online magazine that focuses on issues related to globalization and entrepreneurship. As the first write-up for The Global Entrepreneur, I wrote about the migration for foreign employment trend in Nepal. Well, that is not exactly a novel topic in our case, is it? However, in the article, I have tried to explain how foreign employment is helping Nepal and why it is not that bad to be dependent on foreign employment and the remittances it brings. My argument is what else can a rational person do when the rulers and government have created an environment where a person cannot hope to flourish through hard work and enterprise.

Below is an excerpt from the article:

Image Source: http://www.nepalmountainnews.com

Every day more than 1,500 able-bodied Nepalese citizens leave their abodes, seeking better lives and better opportunities in foreign countries. Many of them end up in the Middle East as construction workers, building stadiums for the World Cup in Qatar, and infrastructure in other gulf countries.

If Qatar hosts the FIFA World Cup in 2022 successfully, Nepal will be among the nations it will have to be thankful to.

Some of the workers have to be content with working menial jobs in different industries. Uddhab Danuwar, 28, is one of them. A native of Panchkhal Village of Kavrepalanchok District, he first migrated to Kathmandu and worked for a pashmina manufacturer for a few years. Uddhab was employed in the coloring and dying process there, and earned Rs. 15,000 a month (USD 154). Last October, he flew to Saudi Arabia for an employment opportunity at a hotel where he currently earns 1,200 Saudi Riyals (USD 320) a month.

“With my meager income back home, I and my family could hardly survive. Here, not only have I been able to cover my expenses, but also save some money to send back to my family,” Danuwar tells The Global Entrepreneur.

“The work is very tough here. I still find it difficult to adjust with the culture and climate, and I miss my family a lot, but I think it’s worth the struggle.”

Paradoxically, their sacrifices didn’t come in the form of sweat and labor alone; in the last year alone, 862 Nepalese lost their lives while being engaged in employment abroad, many of who were building the skyscrapers and stadiums.

As immigrant workers, they are not treated properly as domestic workers would have been. The horrible working environments these migrant workers have had to face in the host countries have made headlines in international media. Some reports have gone to the extent of alleging that foreign workers in Qatar are being treated like cattle.

Yet, the line of emigrant workers waiting for their flights at Nepal’s only international airport keeps getting longer and longer. Care to wonder why?

Read the full article in The Global Entrepreneur by clicking here.

Promoting Entrepreneurship in Nepal

September 14, 2014 Surath Giri— min read

Click on the image to view full size!

Lately entrepreneurship has become a buzzword in Nepal. Entrepreneurship development seems to have caught the attention of the non-profit sector as well as the private sector, even the government to some extent for better or worse. Non Government Organizations (NGOs) and International Non-government Organizations (INGOs) are trying to incorporate entrepreneurship component in their areas of work, private sector has started experimenting venture capitalism and the government has come up with plans to dole out money in the name of entrepreneurship. Increased interest in entrepreneurship among the various actors in the society is appreciable. Entrepreneurship is the ladder delivering economic growth and development in any society regardless of its current economic status. Hence, recognition of entrepreneurship as an important issue for the society can be considered a step in the right direction. Better late than never.

However, entrepreneurship as a skill set or as a resource of the society is different than any other resources in the society. Treating entrepreneurship development like any other developmental issues is likely to corrupt it and lose its value for the developmental sector, if not for the society. As Dr. Ernesto Sirolli, the world renowned entrepreneurship development consultant pointed out during his visit in Kathmandu last week, thousands of initiations by international donors in developing societies like Africa have done more damage than good despite their noble intentions. The major mistake made by the donors is to assume that they know better than the locals and patronize them. The follies made by international donors in developing societies of which Sirolli was once a part has given him a simple but difficult lesson to make economic development initiations more effective i.e. shut up and listen.

Understanding the real problems

Unlike other issues, entrepreneurial journey is about innovating and taking risks to produce something of value to the society which in turn brings revenue to the enterprise and uplifts the living standard of the people involved. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone and even for those who aspire to be entrepreneurs, success is not guaranteed. Hence, entrepreneurship promotion is a job that requires detailed observation and continued support during the various stages of the entrepreneurial journey.

One time intervention and misguided help may in fact do more harm than good in promoting entrepreneurship. One classic example is the case of doling out money with the intention of promoting entrepreneurship like the Government of Nepal did with Youth Self Employment Fund. Contrary to the popular belief, having easy access to finance may not promote entrepreneurship. In fact, easy money could easily kill the entrepreneurial spirit and creativity making the person dependent on donations. Despite spending huge amount of money, Youth Self Employment Fund barely had any impact in developing entrepreneurship in Nepal as a large volume of low interest loan was lent to speculative business instead of new ventures that create employment opportunities. Similarly, the notion in the development sector that entrepreneurship is equal to sum of accounting, technical skill and a team is also misguided. Entrepreneurship is always more than the sum of these various aspects. Besides uncertainty is always a constant factor in any entrepreneurial venture.

Hence, promoting entrepreneurs requires understanding the various aspects of an entrepreneurial journey and identifying at which an entrepreneur is and providing help accordingly. It is essential to shut up and listen to the entrepreneurs and understand the ground reality that an entrepreneur is operating in. As Sirolli points out in his popular TED speech, small scale entrepreneurs are generally besieged by lack of expertise required to delegate the major aspects of businesses and grow the business into another level. Entrepreneurs find it difficult to get support in these areas regardless of where they live and operate. The civil society organizations as well as the private organizations aspiring to develop entrepreneurship in Nepal should take heed of these lessons if they want to be effective in their efforts.

Ensure Safety of Life and Property

Similarly, in the context of Nepal, various political and social problems pose a serious threat to the existence and growth of any enterprise. The security of life and property is so weak that people still hesitate to expose their success to the society for the fear of being extorted or attacked. It is a shameful thing that it is usually the political parties themselves who are involved in extortion and disruption of businesses. Frequent bandas and strikes pose another major problems for small scale entrepreneurs who face severe losses if the operation of their enterprises is disrupted even for a few days.

Lack of infrastructure and government’s apathy towards infrastructure development has resulted in increased cost of doing business for any enterprise regardless of its size. The increased cost of doing business usually affects the small and medium scale enterprises more than the large scale enterprises. Lack of infrastructure and rule of law also discourages the aspiring entrepreneurs from embarking into the entrepreneurial journey.

The government bears the ultimate responsibility in making the provision for the infrastructure development as well as maintenance of law and order. If the Government of Nepal wants to help thousands of entrepreneurial individuals across the country rather than just a few large scale enterprises, it should focus on developing infrastructures that ease up the cost of doing business and ensure safety of lives and property of its citizens so that more and more people are encouraged to dream big and make it big in the entrepreneurial journey.

(Published in The Himalayan Times- Perspectives of 14th September, 2014)

So You Registered a Company. Now What?

August 31, 2014 Surath Giri— min read

Legal compliance is not over with the company registration process. In fact, the legal complexities and burden for any entrepreneur just begin with the completion of the company registration process. The following chart lends a help to the already over burdened entrepreneurs on what compliance to follow after completing the registration process. Thanks to Venture Plus magazine for coming up with this infographic.

Click on the image to view its full size!

How to Help Developing Countries Effectively?

July 31, 2014 Surath Giri— min read

These days everything is getting smart. Beginning from our phones we are in an endless quest to smarten up every gadget we have been using in our daily lives. The quest has resulted in revolutionizing majority of the industries of the world by changing the way people interact with each other as well as the machineries. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of a few institutions and industry, most notably of the global aid industry. The global aid industry has been spewing billions of dollars for endless list of causes around the world. And yet, the effectiveness of aid in helping developing countries stand on their own has been debated again and again. Among the myriads of issues faced by developing countries what are the most important issues, which issues should be the priority for the development aid agencies? This is one question that has never been properly answered. Which issue gets the largest share of aid money at any point of time, seems to be determined by the hype and glamour the issue is commanding at the time.

In this context, Matt Ridley has come up with these five priorities for the development aid to focus on if they really want to make an impact to the developing countries. These five priorities are not based on his personal preference though. It makes economic sense to invest in these priorities as they have been found out to bring the highest return on per dollar spent on the cause. The priorities were determined based on the extensive cost benefit analysis done by The Copenhagen Consensus Center, an internationally reputed think tank.

According to Ridley, following are the issues rich countries should be spending aid money on if they really wanted to help poor countries:

1. Reduce malnutrition. When children get better food, they develop their brains, stay in school longer and end up becoming far more productive members of society. Every dollar spent to alleviate malnutrition brings $59 of benefits.

2. Tackle malaria and tuberculosis. These two diseases debilitate huge populations in poor countries, but they are largely preventable and curable. In the most harshly affected countries, two people often do one person’s work because one of them is sick. Benefit to cost ratio: 35 to 1.

3. Boost preprimary education, which costs little and has lifelong benefits by getting children started on learning. 30 to 1.

4. Provide universal access to sexual and reproductive health, which would save the lives of mothers and infants while enabling women to be more economically productive. It would also lower birthrates (when fewer children die, people have fewer children). Benefits could be as high as 150.

5. Expand free trade. This isn’t considered sexy in the development industry, and it may seem remote from humanitarian issues, but free trade often delivers phenomenal improvements to the welfare of the poor in surprisingly quick time, as the example of China has demonstrated in recent years. One of the discoveries of the Copenhagen Consensus process is that incremental goals such as expanding free trade are often better than supposedly “transformational” goals. A successful Doha Round of the World Trade Organization could deliver annual benefits of $3 trillion for the developing world by 2020, rising to $100 trillion by the end of the century.

You can read Ridely’s complete article at this link.

What do you think of these five priorities? One of the popular causes, climate change has not made it to the list. What is your opinion on it?

Who failed in the SLC exams? Students or the Government?

June 17, 2014 Surath Giri— min read

(This article was published in Republica daily of June 17, 2014 with the title "Flagrant Failure")

The Iron Gate has opened ajar. Only 43.9 percent students taking the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) exams made it through. As it happens every year, disappointing results come out, the education officials make a few apologetic remarks; the government promises yet another education plan with huge funding; public intellectuals berate private schools for their success and lament the inequality; people make consolatory remarks such as passing SLC is not everything; and after a week or two, the hue and cry dies and then it’s business as usual.

SLC may not tell much about the prospect of a student in life but it does tell a lot about the educational system. The pass percentage, despite relaxation of standards and cheatings allowed during exams, is embarrassingly low. If we segregate the SLC performance of public and private schools, a clear picture emerges which points out to the root of the problem. Ninety-three percent of students from private schools have passed the exams this year as compared to 28 percent from public schools. For the past four years, the pass rates for private educational institutions have been above 80 percent whereas the maximum pass rate for public schools was 46 percent in 2011.

The problem is not with the whole educational system but with the public schools and the way they are run. Private educational institutions are doing just fine and in fact are the saving grace of our educational system.

Why such a disparity? Most people, like the Ministry of Education spokesperson, would be quick to point out higher investment in private schools as the reason behind better results. But there are many private schools with less investment than government schools and are yet doing much better. Consider Samata Siksha Niketan, popularly known as Bamboo School, which charges Rs 100 a month and yet achieves 100 percent result; or Melamchi Ghyang Secondary School in Helambu which has achieved glorious results despite being in a remote place and without much investment. It is also interesting to note that one of the toppers of this year’s exam, Sanjog Karki, comes from Reliance Academy in Kapan, a school catering to middle or lower middle class, and not from an elite school.

Upon being asked about their secret to success, many schools attribute it to good management and dedicated teachers, which are precisely the things lacking in public schools. Government school teachers are paid ranging from Rs 14,000 to Rs 31,000 whereas private school teachers generally get paid between Rs 5,000 to Rs 20,000. But these costs for government school teachers are just the tip of the iceberg.

Lifelong pension after retirement and additional benefits for rural assignments comprise another major chunk of overall cost. It is important to note here that millions of dollars received in aid through government and non-government channels are also spent on public schools. And yet, the excuse government comes up with is lack of investment as if more investment in the past has done any better. A full 331 community and government run schools across the country had zero results this year. There is just no justifying that.

Lack of a linkage between the performance of the school/teachers and the revenue they get is a more credible reason behind the poor performance of public schools. As news reports in the past have highlighted, teacher absenteeism is a major hurdle towards learning for pupils in public schools. We have had many news reports detailing how teachers of government schools are more interested in side jobs, political activities and protesting for permanency rather than teaching. Early at the start of the educational year, reports surfaced about millions of rupees allocated for textbooks being embezzled by school officials, and pupils were denied access to something as basic as textbooks.

Hence, the problem is neither with the overall educational system nor lack of investment in education but more with the incentive structure of the educational system. In fact, as much as a billion rupees is being spent on ‘fake’ schools, as reported in April 2014, using the same channel (the government) to invest more is completely ludicrous.

One of the major flaws with the government-run schools is that the guardians never have a say on the revenue generation or rewarding of the school or the teachers which encourages them to neglect their responsibilities. Since the schools and the teachers generate their income from government rather than the guardians, they have very little, if any, incentive to heed the wishes of the children or their guardians.

The first step towards reforming our educational system would be to change the incentive structure. The government should fund the students, not the schools. The government expenditure on education is for the sake of the children not for the sake of the schools or the teachers. Experimenting with the education voucher system being practiced in countries like India, Sweden and the US (as well as with charter schools) could be one way to restructure the incentive system. Similarly, encouraging and helping organizations like Teach for Nepal is important because they truly care for better education in the country.

There are dozens of measures the government could take to lift public schools’ performance and set them at par with the private schools. Pouring more money into the existing structure is not one of them.

-Surath Giri