Business Investment Opportunities & Ideas in Nepal

Author | January 4, 2020 | Nepal | No Comments

Nepal is a country that is in the process of development, so surely it needs some works of development for which investments are needed the most. As being a newly emerging economy in the world, it still has low competition in any field where you wish to invest. It makes Nepal with more opportunities and less competition.

This is the perfect time to invest in Nepal, as it is politically stable and its government has made policies to create an investment-friendly environment. Nepal is seeking for foreign direct investments (FDIs) and to attract them it has lowered its taxes to one of the lowest as well as it is one of the best countries where there is the ease of doing work. Nepal also offers 100% Foreign direct investment (FDI) in various sectors as well as in partnership with local businesses.

The naturally available resources as well as duty-free and open border access to India and for over 4000 products duty-free access to China makes the potential of Nepal to develop and get investment even higher.

There are a lot of sectors in Nepal in which you can invest in. But here we have enlisted some of the best business investment sectors which have huge potential to give back the high profit from the investment as well as to develop the whole country through it all alone.

Best Business Investment Opportunities & Ideas:

1. Opportunities & Ideas in Tourism

Nepal as being blessed by nature, investment in the tourism industry can surely be profitable in Nepal. Although tourism is an old industry in Nepal still it is unable to cover the whole of Nepal from Eastern to Far Western part of Nepal.

Still, there are many beautiful places in Nepal which are unveiled, unseen and untouched by the tourists. So, there is more possibility of rising the tourism industry in Nepal and in a way which has not been tried in the Nepalese tourism industry yet.

It is impossible to find any other country having so much possibility of tourism with limited land but unlimited variations all over the place. From historical, social, cultural, religious, natural, adventurous aspects, every kind of tourism is possible in Nepal. So here are some of the areas of the tourism industry which can be a profitable idea to invest in.

Tourist guide, agency

Every year thousands of tourists visit Nepal. The tour agency and guide service can be profitable in the context of Nepal. There are hundreds of places listed as tourist spots in Nepal and many other places with high potential to be considered as tourist spots. You can hire people or work on your own but certainly, it requires the person with good knowledge about places. Travel agency and guide services are profitable in Nepal as Nepal is a hub for adventurous tourism, cultural tourism and for nature lovers. You can give a full service to tourists, from before their arrival to their departure for their country. Guides are those people with whose eyes tourist visits the places, so it all depends on the knowledge of guide to change the experience of tourists. A travel agency can be run in Nepal with less investment but it requires an experienced person to work for your business. For that, you can hire people who can provide the best experience to your clients.

Best example: NepalHikingTeam

Online Travel service (website/app)

You can create websites or application for tourist who wants to visit Nepal with helpful information about the process to visit Nepal or about the best places to visit in Nepal, etc.

There are many popular international websites and apps dedicated to the tourism sector but a local website and application have not been created to compete with those websites at least for tourist who wants to visit Nepal.

You can create an application or website solely dedicated to tourism in Nepal, there will be no chance to fail in this field with correct execution and helpful information in the application or website.

There are many applications and websites dedicated to tourism so to reach the top to compete with them, your creativity plays an important role to create a user-friendly platform to attract more tourists by providing a better platform than other existing.

You can provide International flight tickets as well as local flight tickets at a cheaper price for tourists in your app or website as all international OTA provides local flight tickets at a costlier price than what you can get locally. You can add many helpful features to tourists through your app and website which will definitely place your app or website at the top level.

Best example: Trekking in Nepal’s mobile app.

Car/Bike/apartment Rentals

You can invest in rental service for tourist who needs apartments or houses or vehicles to stay and roam around in Nepal. This can be profitable as not all tourists want to stay in hotels, some likes to live and enjoy in Nepal as a local.

Many tourists go for cycling or bike rides in the hilly regions of Nepal to feel the adventure of riding these vehicles in the fresh air of Nepal. You can start a vehicle rental service by providing cars, bikes or even bicycles to give rental service to tourists.

Tourist love to travel Nepal on their own most of the time with their own group, that’s the time when they search for these rental services. This is also a beneficial way to earn money easily from the tourism Industry. But it requires investment in these rental products to purchase them to provide them for rental service.

Best example: Nepal Mountain Bike

Restaurant and Bar

The other important and most profitable sector to invest or uplift the tourism sector is by opening a Restaurant and Bar. You can open restaurants and bars dedicated to tourists where they can eat authentic Nepali foods and cuisines.

It is always profitable as no tourist will be able to resist to eat the local cuisines of Nepal. Nepal doesn’t have a sufficient amount of restaurants and bars for tourists as most of the restaurants are only located in city areas. Rest of the places small food stalls take care of travelers.

You need to provide Authentic and delicious cuisines for your customers to run your restaurant in the long run. The bar can be used to serve different variety of drinks including local to International which let tourists feel good and forget the tiredness of travel. Most of the tourists try to taste different Nepali cuisines of Nepal during their stay.

Best example: Bota MOMO

Trekking/Mountain gear Rentals

It might be in the bucket list of many people who visit Nepal to do trekking or hiking in Nepal at least once in their lifetime. As many tourists visit Nepal for this adventurous tourism so they certainly will require trekking or mountain gears to do trekking and mountaineering or hiking.

So you can invest in trekking or mountain gear rental service in Nepal to earn a relatively good income by providing rental service to tourists who want to go for trekking or mountaineering. Most of the tourists would not like not to carry these mountain gears with them from their own country and will definitely search for rental services available in Nepal to travel light.

It is easy to invest and run this business in Nepal as thousands of tourists visit Nepal every year. This business doesn’t require much experience, or specialization in this field, and can be done on a small scale with low investment.

The mountain or hiking gear rental will have products such as down sleeping bags, jackets, trekking poles, water bottles, boots, and sunglasses, especially for hiking and mountaineering.

Best example: Kathmandu Out Door

Travel & Tourism Photography

If you just love to travel to different places and want to make a career of it, travel photography can be one. You can have a good income by just using your camera, as you have to provide high-quality images to a variety of clients.

For a travel photography business, clients can be print magazines, websites, travel blogs, television ads, and framed prints for sale. The only thing you need to do in this business is just travel and click the mesmerizing moments of your traveled places. This will include a variety of locations to deliver the landscapes, hotel rooms, and recreational shots that your clients are looking for.

You can travel to different beautiful places in Nepal as they are still unexplored and you can click photography as per the needs of clients who work with you or maybe sponsor you to travel to those places. It can create a good source of income as many people from all over the world are already earning from travel and travel photography.

Best example: AllNepal

2. Opportunities & Ideas in Technology

Nepal is not in a position to win the world in terms of the development of technology but Nepal is in no way less competitive in terms of use of the technology.

Any technology that is created in the world can be easily accessed in Nepal. Mostly, information technology is the blooming field in Nepal. The software developers and programmers from Nepal are able to grab jobs in top IT companies of the world with their knowledge and capabilities to create something better to serve the world.

As we know this is the era of technology, more precisely the era of computers, smartphones, and software. The technology is changing the world every second, the works that used to take hours is being done through a small handheld smartphone with a tiny application installed inside it. So here are some of the technology fields that can give a high yield if the investment is done in them now.

Website/app design Service

Every company and organization in Nepal from private to government as well as small scale industries are trying to reach out to most of the people through online presence. For that, the government has also provided free domain name service to create websites for any individual or any organization or industry registered in Nepal.

So this effort of Government of Nepal to make Nepal a Digital Nepal blooms the website designing service in Nepal. As well as the companies want to remain accessible anytime through the mobile application so not just web designing, application designing is also a profitable business that you can invest in.

There are many talented people in Nepal in web technology, so the only thing you need to do is to invest in starting a company and hire talented young people of Nepal to provide services to your customers, you will be profitable through their work as well as they will get a reputed job too.

Best example: CandidThemes

Software Development Service

Another field of technology that you can invest in Nepal is Software Development Service. You can invest in starting a company and hire programmers from Nepal who have good knowledge of programming and coding.

Most of the young people in Nepal have to go to foreign countries after pursuing their degrees in search of jobs, you can create a full stop to this trend by establishing a brand that can hire the best programmers of Nepal.

You might think the market will be limited to Nepal but in fact, you can sell software to different companies worldwide, so it has a large market or can be said, it has no boundaries to limit the market area.

Software Development Services generally provide the services to the client who is seeking for a software product for their business or personal use. Mostly, the software is created for specific purposes and but they can also be sold at a handsome sum if it’s really useful to most of the people.

Best example: Deerwalk

Animation development service

Similar to Software and web development service, the animation development service also doesn’t have boundaries to limit your market. Animation development service can be a profitable Investment in Nepal with almost no competition and you will be able to provide your service to any local companies that need these services for promotion of their products or ad agencies or for the creation of cartoons for Nepalese viewer, etc.

Your product can be sold worldwide and similarly to other fields of information and technology, you can hire talented Nepalese young people to work for your company. It is easier to establish a brand in Nepal as there’s no competition in this field in Nepal. Animation Development Service generally provides services for advertisement, TV, Films, etc.

So there is a lot of scope in this field. Like all other Information Technology businesses, this business also requires a good knowledge of Animation development. If you’re establishing a company, it would be better if you have a good knowledge of Animation development or you can hire young talented people to work for your company also.

Best example: Maya Animation Academy

Ecommerce Platform

One of the richest companies in the world is Amazon which almost serves Worldwide as e-commerce platform but it is yet not available in Nepal. There are many other e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Alibaba, eBay, etc which are successful worldwide. But still, these e-commerce platforms are not available in Nepal.

That’s why there’s very little competition in this field in Nepal. The e-commerce platform can be created for a specific product or for various products, so there’s a lot of possibility in the e-commerce platform in Nepal. E-commerce in Nepal is still in emerging state and Nepalese investors can learn from other country’s e-commerce platforms for creating a successful platform and to improve e-commerce conveniently.

Now the online business is getting popular and people are also choosing these platforms to buy different kinds of products such as clothes, books, electronics, gadgets, groceries, etc in Nepal. So it has a good scope in the upcoming years in Nepal as more people will be using these platforms to buy products.

Best example: Hamrobazar

IT Training, staffing and consulting

Another recently emerging companies in Nepal are IT training, staffing, and consulting companies. You can start your own such company which can give training and provides staff as per the client’s needs.

Your company can recruit and train the staff for your client companies so they can deliver the best for the organization in which they will work. IT training, staffing, and consulting companies will search for the IT talents, staff who are suitable for the jobs in the client’s company as well as for full management to lessen the managerial responsibility of timesheets, expenses, and scheduling of client’s company.

These consultancies also provide IT training to the staff of the client’s company to keep them up to date about the latest cutting edge technologies. Consulting service is also provided as per the need of clients in IT sectors.

These companies provide professional IT staff to provide the talent which clients are seeking to ensure success. So you can start an IT training, staffing and consulting company and hire people to work for you to provide these services to your clients.

Best Example: Broadway Infosys Nepal

Digital Marketing Consulting

If you have good knowledge of digital marketing along with other aspects such as content writing, SEO, advertising, social media marketing, etc, you can start a digital marketing consultancy.

You can serve various individuals and companies to grow their online presence with the help of advertisement, SEO, web designing, user interface, etc, for this you can start as a Digital marketing consultant.

A company with different specialists in different areas of digital marketing, working as a team will certainly be beneficial to get established as a brand name, so you can hire people with specialized knowledge on digital marketing to work with you in your consultancy.

These consultancies are in growing demand in Nepal as most of the national and international companies partner with consultancies to have more online presence and to be available with ease for their customers. The only thing that you require in this business is a good knowledge of digital marketing or you can hire a specialist to work for your company.

Checkout Ken Subedi and his team’s work on Wordinvent.

3. Opportunities & Ideas in Agriculture

Nepal is always known as an agricultural country from ancient times. The potential of the Terai belt of Nepal to produce crops and hills to produce vegetables and Himalayas for ayurvedic herbs is unmatchable to any country of the world.

You cannot find so much diversity in such a small area of the land. You can do various agricultural works in Nepal to earn high profit as most of the working young manpower in Nepal has gone to foreign countries to work and study so the country needs a high yield of production to feed the rest of the population.

Although being an agricultural country, Nepal imports vegetables and crops from the neighboring country India. It has highly impacted the economy of the country as well as our lands are remaining barren. We are sending our money to other countries to buy various foreign products which also include vegetable and fruit products. So here are some of the agricultural works that you can do in Nepal to get benefitted as well as help our country Nepal in economical and agricultural growth:

Organic agricultural farming

The vegetables and crops are all grown with the use of pesticides and insecticides. Even Nepal imports most of the vegetables and crops from India for daily consumption which is full of pesticides and insecticides.

The imported vegetables even fall below the range of human consumption due to the more amount of chemical used. People are willing to pay more money for organic food, but it’s rarely available in cities of Nepal.

Currently, in Nepal, vegetables like Peas, Soybean, Cucumber, Lady Finger, Brinjal, Bitter Gourd, Onion, Coriander, Cauliflower, Cabbage, Potatoes, Tomato, Carrot, Radish, Spinach, Green Salads, Leeks, Broccolis, Artichokes, Brussel Sprouts, etc are produced in organic farms but in smaller scale. So there is a great scope for Organic agricultural farming in Nepal.

Checkout Media Plan’s YouTube

Ayurvedic medicine production

Nepal is rich in plants with medicinal benefits which also have great importance in Ayurveda. Various types of trees, herbs, and shrubs are only found in Nepal which is mentioned in Ayurveda texts that can cure various types of diseases and illnesses.

Ayurveda is one of the oldest and continuously practiced medical systems in the world. The Himalayas of Nepal is home to thousands of ancient Ayurvedic manuscripts as well as the biodiversity of Nepal gives rise to a fertile region for many Ayurvedic herbs.

Ayurvedic medicines can be produced using herbs such as Shilajit (mineral pitch), Guggul (Indian Bdellium), Brahmi (Indian Pennywort), Amala (Indian Gooseberry), Ashwagandha (Winter Cherry), Neem(Margosa), Yarsagumba (Cordyceps Sinesis), etc.

These herbs can enhance can be used for the preparation of herbal and Ayurvedic medicine as they are locally available in Nepal. Ayurvedic and herbal medicine can be sold at a higher price in foreign countries and can obtain a lot of profit from this business.

Checkout Nepal Herbs and Herbal Products Association

Dairy Farming

There used to be a time when the rich and poor were distinguished by the number of cattle they had, but the time has changed now. Now nobody wants to keep cattle in their houses as they have become richer in terms of cash which can buy anything.

So there is the demand for pure milk which is being scarce in cities of Nepal as well as in towns and villages. Dairy farming has a higher scope to earn from less investment.

It can be done on a large level by hiring people to work on your dairy farm as similar to foreign countries. Many technologies are now imported in Nepal to make the dairy farm more advanced.

The dairy farms can produce dairy products such as organic milk, cheese, butter, curd as well as ice cream, paneer, yogurt, ghee, etc. The cattle farms in Nepal are now getting commercialized as individuals are earning more than foreign employment.

Checkout Nepal Chitra’s YouTube

Organic Fertilizer Production

Fertilizer Production can be done for the farmers of Nepal. It has high demand in Nepal as the yield of more crops is only possible when fertilizer is used on land. Either organic fertilizer or chemical fertilizer, both have a huge market.

Though Nepal doesn’t have any chemical fertilizer production plants as of now all the chemical fertilizers are being imported from India. But there is a high demand for fertilizer in Nepal, which can not be fulfilled by imported chemical fertilizers alone.

This demand can be reduced by the use of organic fertilizers such as vermicompost and cattle manures which are an excellent source for organic fertilizers that can be produced at a local level from villages of Nepal as well as by establishing small scale companies to produce organic fertilizers.

Checkout National Biotech’s YouTube

Dried Fruit/Vegetable Business

The most popular dried fruits in Nepal are Lapsi (Nepali hog plum), Cashew, Almond, peanuts, walnuts, Raisins (Kishmish), etc. These fruits grow in orchards of Nepal and the production can be done on a large scale to supply dried fruits industries.

The climate of Nepal is favorable for most of the fruits. In Kathmandu, Lapsi, Titaura (pickle) is more popular than any other dried fruit. Other dried fruits like Cashew, Almond, walnuts can be very much profitable as they are sold at higher prices and are one of the costlier nuts.

Not just dried fruits, vegetable business is also quite beneficial in Nepal. Many people in Nepal now buy vegetables for daily consumption in day to day life. Vegetables can be grown on a large scale with the use of advanced agricultural techniques to yield more production.

Read more on Agriculture & Food Security

Poultry Farming

There is a high demand for meat in everyplace in Nepal. That demand for meat can be easily fulfilled by the meat of poultry. Poultry farming is not just about keeping chicken but also includes the process of keeping or domesticating other birds and animals for meat, egg or other items.

It has been one of the important occupations in Nepal. It is also a higher demand because of the ban on the poultry which is brought inside Nepal from India. It is illegal to bring chicken or eggs from India due to the risk of spreading diseases such as Bird Flu.

So people also prefer local poultry chicken which is healthy as well as free from disease. This demand can be fulfilled by having a poultry farm. In Nepal, the poultry farm is done for chicken, ducks, turkeys, and many other birds. Eggs of Chicken, ostrich, swan, etc are also on-demand in Nepal from poultry farms.

Checkout Bos Agriculture Nepal’s YouTube

Mushroom Farming

Mushroom farming is the most profitable farming that can be ever done. It is one of the cheapest investments that gives the highest profit. Also, it doesn’t require any kind of heavy manpower.

Mushroom as food is quite beneficial as they are low in calories, fat-free, cholesterol-free and very low in sodium, and still provide important nutrients to the body.

But you have to be sure the seed you are using is a trusted one, the otherwise wild mushroom can be poisonous and can kill people. You can buy seeds from the trusted agro shop and grow the mushrooms in favorable conditions.

In Nepal, commonly they are grown in houses using a straw, by decaying them in dark places, so mushroom can feed on them to grow. Mushroom can be grown using the organic composting method so it’s beneficial to grow mushroom as the cost of mushroom is not less than any high-quality meat.

Checkout Ashish Lamichhane’s YouTube

Beekeeping/ Honey production Business

Honey production or beekeeping is also another business which can give higher profit with less investment. The primary objective of beekeeping in Nepal is to produce honey.

Honey can be used for medical purposes such as Ayurveda, acupuncture, alternative medicine and homeopathy. The wax obtained from the bee can be used for making candles, cosmetics and furniture polish.

So it is a popular and profitable business that can be done in Nepal. It doesn’t require much land though it can be beneficial if you also have floriculture business.

The climate, topography and floral variety of Nepal can be called heaven for bees. In Nepal, the ancestral technology of beekeeping is still in use though you can use modern techniques and hives for beekeeping in Nepal.

The other benefits that can be obtained with beekeeping are, you can utilize bee wax for making candles or cosmetics, ayurvedic benefits, bee sting is also believed to be a type of cure and used as apitherapy.

Checkout Ashish Lamichhane’s YouTube

Fish Farming

Fish also have high demand in Nepal because there’s no sea or ocean in Nepal to have big fish or sea products in Nepal. Most of the Marine food is imported in Nepal for five stars hotels.

Whereas the market for local fish is wider as they are served in both Five Stars hotels as well as roadside cafes. There are more than 185 species of fish in Nepal.

In Nepal, the popular fish are Rohu, Catla, Silver carp, Mrigal, Bighead carp, Grass carp, and Rainbow trout. The government of Nepal has also an emphasis on its budget for fish farming to make Nepal a self-sustaining country in fish production.

The Starting and operating a fish farm is cost-effective as fish feed and fingerlings are sold at inexpensive prices. As there are abundant unused water resources like rivers, lakes, man-made reservoirs, swamps, ponds, etc easily available in Nepal which are most suitable for fisheries and aquaculture development. They provide an excellent habitat for fishes.

Checkout Mero Filmy TV’s YouTube