Keeping up with the legacy of welcoming the country’s most influential CEOs/entrepreneurs to inspire the enthusiastic entrepreneurial minds of the country, Glocal Pvt. Ltd. in collaboration with King’s College has successfully concluded the third edition of ‘CEO Unplugged 2018’ on February 24, 2018, at Hotel Soaltee Crowne Plaza, Kathmandu.
With the main theme of ‘Today Meets Tomorrow’, 15 reputed entrepreneurs of the country marked their presence as the speakers on this year’s CEO Unplugged. More than 100 aspirants participated in this highly anticipated event to network, learn, and share their notions with the prominent entrepreneurs of the country.
Dr. Swarnim Waglé, the Vice-Chairman of the National Planning Commission (NPC), served as a keynote speaker for the event. Through his keynote speech, Wagle brought out the best of the theme of the event. Rousing optimistic views about the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the country, Wagle who had served as National Planning Commission Member for 28 months shared about putting the long-term vision of the development agenda of SDGs in Nepal.
Rousing optimistic views about the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the country, Wagle who had served as National Planning Commission Member for 28 months shared about putting the long-term vision of the development agenda of SDGs in Nepal.
On one hand, Wagle shared the plans of the commission to achieve long-term sustainable development aligned with the SDGs. On the other hand, he talked about the risk and vulnerability of the country that is hindering the growth as a whole. Similarly, he mentioned on to the agricultural prospects, widened migratory flow, demographic pattern, fresh burst of labour force, political change throughout the history of the country, economic processes in the modern democracy and achievement of the country as a whole. He also took the panel to share the frameworks for the better actions plans to overcome the challenges of the country.
Distinguished into three different panels that had a unique story to tell to the audience, CEO Unplugged’s first panel conversed on the topic of ‘Generational Change to Family Business: Mapping Young Minds’. The panel’s main objective was to mirror the innovative changes that the young minds of the family have brought out in work, careers, family life and family business. The millennials of the panel had Suman Shakya, founder of Smart Paani as the moderator.
Abhimanyau Golchha, Director at HH Bajaj; Akhil Gupta, Director of Shanker Group; Satish Pokhrel, Director of Agni Cement; Saurabh Jyoti, Director at Jyoti Group and Siddhant Raj Pandey, CEO of Business Oxygen Pvt. Ltd. were the panel members.
Suman aroused a very engaging ambience in the very first panel. These young guns conversed about their experience of instigating a family business and how the stereotype of the society hits them while they overtake their work.
Satish added, “To be honest, our family is the real entrepreneur. In order to keep up with that, we need to work extra harder and the stereotype of easiness as a thing for us being a child of an entrepreneur family is the major problem.”
Furthermore, these entrepreneurs conversed on how everyone needs to work harder and Nepal is the best place for uptaking entrepreneurship. They all focused on their grueling journey to become what they are today.
The second panel, ‘Business Adaptation: Changing Nepal’, had the aim to discuss in the certainty and predictability ruled in the country through the insight of Boomers Leaders tapping the economic development change in Nepal. Discussing on the major bottleneck for Nepal to achieve higher levels of economic growth, Anil Chitrakar, President at Siddhartnic, moderated the panel.
Chandra Dhakal, Chairman of IME Group; Joseph Silvanus; CEO at Standard Chartered Bank Nepal; Puneet Varshney, MD at Bottler’s Nepal and Dr. Upendra Mahato, Founder of Mahato Group of Industries were the distinguished veteran personalities of the panel.
Anil introduced the term ‘change’ in the panel and how do these veteran entrepreneurs take up to the change factor in Nepal, cope up with the changing scenario and visualize the changing resistance in Nepal.
Answering the query, all of these entrepreneurs mentioned that change is a constant thing in everyone’s life and this change is in the midst of an entrepreneur. Chandra Dhakal shared, “While taking up to the challenge of a change in an enterprise, I mainly focus on three things. Firstly, an entrepreneur should focus on how the product of a certain service will be received by the consumer. Secondly, he/ she should learn about the expectation of a government from the enterprise and thirdly it all depends upon if the business motive gets fulfilled or not.” Furthermore, Dr. Upendra Mahato mentioned that the changing innovations should be local and the major change should be global. Mahato shared, “Your thought of change should always be constant but honesty, labour, and dedication will always lead you to the door of success.”
The final panel discussion, ‘Application of Knowledge: Challenge in Today’s Business’. It aimed to showcase the challenge that is harnessing the knowledge of simple ideas in the current businesses scenario. These ideas have let a path of coherent and productive way in business. With a sidelined view towards the main aim, Chhaya Sharma, Chairperson at NCTTM; Richard Howard, Country Director at ILO; Sambridhi Gyawali, Executive Director at Nepal Republic Media and Sishir Khanal, CEO at Teach for Nepal were the members on board for the panel, conversed about the need and necessities of the skills in today’s world.
Ashish Thakur, the Executive Director of Glocal Pvt. Ltd. moderated the final panel of the event. With an engaging ambience, the final panel showcased a single thing that a person requires to move forward and succeed in life, i.e. skills and influence of skill in the life of a certain individual.
The speakers of the panel focused their discussions of how the education of today’s Nepal is still in need of a change by the application of skills. Furthermore, talking about the attitude and positivity being the indelible part of a person to get through the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the country, these speakers conversed on the possibilities Nepal has within itself due to the skills of Nepalese.
Chhaya Sharma, Executive Director at NCTTM, mentioned, “Sometimes the youths of the country even forget what ‘respect’ and ‘humanity’ means. While moving forward to becoming independent by applying the skills of the West, we have really forgotten what values we had got from our generation.”
Shishir Khanal added, “Nepal has individuals who possess a lot of enthusiasm and talent to move forward. But, the mindset that has been bringing stereotypes of talented students only to join engineering and management has impeded the growth of the education factor of Nepal.”
