It is difficult to describe Kathmandu. On one hand it bears the burden of being the capital of one of the poorest countries in the world, on the other it has grown into a bustling cosmopolitan city with hellish traffic jams and suburban sprawl.
To find a good place to eat in Nepal’s capital, amidst the narrow lanes seething with an incredible crush of humanity, is not a simple task. Visitors often find themselves walking in circles and resorting to TripAdvisor and Google Maps to provide an answer of sorts.
Kathmandu-based startup YellowNepal aims to make this task easier by providing a discovery service for 1,500 restaurants in the Kathmandu Valley.
The company’s signature app, called Yellow App, is available on the Play Store and the company is planning to launch the iOS version by early March. The interface of the app allows you to search for restaurants by name, cuisine, or area with an option to check details like menus, directions, business hours, and contact info of the establishments.
Founded by Anish Shrestha and Manisha Karmacharya, the idea of YellowNepal was conceptualized when the two met at a startup event. They opted to bootstrap but aim to raise funds within the next six months. There was encouragement for the duo within a few months of its inception after they won the 2014 edition of the Google Business Group’s (GBG) Stories Challenge.
Manisha Karmacharya and Anish Shrestha, founders of YellowNepal
There is a challenge that lies ahead of them – most of the businesses in Nepal do not have an online presence. At present, YellowNepal lists the bulk of the business establishments manually after crawling restaurant websites, when the information is available. In addition, they reach out to the restaurants to verify details like addresses and coordinates, food menus, deals, operating hours, amenities, and events. The listed restaurants are provided with an option to update the details on the website.
Given the repository of curated data at their disposal, YellowNepal aims to be the market leader in this space. They already have first mover advantage in Nepal, and Shrestha is aware of this. “Definitely there are other services that are growing massively, Zomato being the perfect example. We have plans to scale in the neighboring countries as soon as we are ready,” he said.
For the time being, they choose to look closer to home by curating data for at least 10,000 restaurants in Nepal, with an aim to cover popular tourists areas like Pokhara and Chitwan. The tourism industry is the among most important sources of income for the country, and startups like YellowNepal look to cash in on the dearth of local information online.
Hope for the future
Nepal’s startup culture is relatively young. It’s a long way from being a big technology market and there is little concept of seed funding. Furthermore, only 35 percent of the population has internet access with mobile internet making up the bulk of the subscriptions.
Shrestha, however, is optimistic about the startup community’s future in Nepal. They can build on the public’s increasing usage of the internet and resolve organic problems. The Nepalese diaspora have started weighing in with their educational qualifications and work experience after returning from countries like neighboring India and Singapore.
It is up to the Nepalese entrepreneurs to understand the advantages of using technology to launch ventures and provide solutions for locals.
See: Tech Entrepreneurship is Brewing Up in Kathmandu, Nepal
This post This Nepalese startup helps you find restaurants in Kathmandu appeared first on Tech in Asia.
This Nepalese startup helps you find restaurants in Kathmandu
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