Bringing US success to Nepal
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KATHMANDU, July 25 - He came to Kathmandu for the first time in 1973 as a second grade student from Naubise, Dhading, and completed his SLC at Padmodaya High School. Now he visits Kathmandu for three weeks in every three months to look after his business, which is spread between Nepal and the US.
Rudra Pandey, 41, and his partner Dr Chris Kryder established D2Hawkeye Inc, a software company in Massachusetts, USA, that has provided employment to over 35 in Nepal and 40 in the US. The company last year poured half a million dollars (about Rs 36 million) into the Nepal office in salaries and office maintenance.
"Our growth has been pretty impressive in the US. That will have direct positive impact on our Nepal subsidiary," says Pandey.
D2Hawkeye Inc, owner of D2Hawkeye Services, Kathmandu, is soon set to field a 200-strong team of engineers, most of them Nepali.
The story of a small boy from Dhading is impressive, but it was certainly no cakewalk to the success.
Pandey lost his father when he was only four years old. The family of five children was raised by his grandfather, Kamala Pati Pandey. As Rudra, the fourth child, was very sharp in studies, he was sent to Kathmandu.
Pandey not only completed his studies with distinction, but also took a keen interest in extra-curricular activities. When he was in 10th grade he was given the chance to take part in a high school-level debate in the Kathmandu Valley organized by the Nepal Children?s Organization (Bal Mandir) and won a trip to Russia (then the USSR).
He topped I Sc (Intermediate of Science) exams in 1983 at Tri Chandra College. Subsequently, he went to Mehran University, Pakistan, to study software engineering. He also topped there and won the gold medal.
On his return from Pakistan in 1988, he worked as a computer trainer for sometime. "Then a friend of mine told me about an opening in the World Bank. Instead of applying, I went straight there to meet the concerned people, and they hired me on the spot," he recalls. "Working for the World Bank, I got to see many remote districts of Nepal. I was also exposed to the workings of an international organization."
He wouldn?t have left Nepal, and would have become just another high-salaried executive, had conviction not intervened. It happened after the WB job.
It was in 1993. He was working for the Ministry of General Administration as a UNDP Consultant on a project to develop a computerized record of all HMG staff.
"I was shocked to see that tons of expatriate consultants had already spent millions of dollars trying to develop the system with Dbase III plus software."
He knew that it was simply impossible to develop the system with such a small program. "I wrote to the UN?s Assistant Resident Representative and explained, and it became a big issue." He doesn?t know if the problem was rectified, but he resigned from the job after the Assistant Resident Representative asked him to withdraw his report.
It was then that he decided to go for further studies in the US. By that time he had already married Muna Joshi. In 1994 he went to the US and took his PhD in economics at North Eastern University, Boston.
In the spring of 2000 Pandey met an MIT MBA, Dr Chris Kryder. These two outstanding minds came up with an idea to create data-mining software for healthcare cost and care decision-makers in the US.
Rudra started writing software applications, and Chris, a seasoned doctor and a business executive, started to talk with his friends in the US marketplace.
Rudra, who is known to his colleagues and friends as a very smart and hard working person, created the first version of the software single-handed in three months. The basic package was there, but they did not have enough capital to hire software engineers to take the product to the next level.
Rudra came back to Nepal in fall 2000 and met his friends Tika Upreti and Bijay Ghimire. Tika and Bijay took up the challenge. Tika?s confidence that he would be able to source world-class engineers, and Bijay?s superb software skills, saw Rudra return to the US strongly optimistic.
Chris and Rudra decided to outsource most of their software engineering needs to Kathmandu. With the help of very smart and hard working engineers in Nepal, the software gradually matured and started to flourish in the US marketplace.
"English-medium education and natural beauty are the real big assets to attract foreign companies to invest in Nepal," Rudra says.
Very soon Rudra won?t need to work so hard, as the company has been institutionalized and has hired a few experts to take up the crucial executive positions.
"I have always been interested in politics. In my college days I was affiliated with the Nepal Students? Union." But politics is not yet his goal. Rudra wants to accumulate venture capital from the US to build basic infrastructures like roads, water supply and fiber-optics in Nepal.
"But ultimately, yes, politics," he beams
