Entrepreneurship is defined as the process of identifying and starting a new business venture, sourcing and organizing the required resources, while taking both the risks and rewards associated with the venture. Entrepreneurship is about innovation and development that take the society forward.

“Entrepreneurship is about attending the society’s problems and challenges. It’s about addressing those challenges with products,” says Anil Chitrakar, social entrepreneur and Ashoka Fellow. “Economic benefits are just consequences of addressing those problems.” 

If you meet the wannabe young entrepreneurs in Nepal, most complain about lack of entrepreneurial culture in Nepal. Is it true? Anil Chitrakar says, “If you look back, the Newar sahujis of Kathmandu used to walk 30 days to Lhasa (Tibet) and carry out trade. They would come back and build paatis (rest houses) and other temples. Things have changed over time. Now they’ve built big houses in the capital and their main source of income is the rent. They aren’t innovating, merely making money.”

However, he agrees that there’s a shift due to the rapidly growing technology and Nepalis learning new crafts abroad.

Scene, Wednesday, May 7, 2014

A hall at a 5-star hotel in Kathmandu, filled with startup ventures. The event: REC@nnect Start up Boot Camp, organized by CRDF Global and the US State Department, with local partners in ACE Institute of Management, and Microsoft Innovation Center Nepal.

When the awards were announced, the maximum applause was reserved for The Pitch that was ranked third, not the first or the second. The reason: The Pitch was made by a Nepali. It didn’t matter that he was representing a company that was based in India.

A youngster quipped, “They deserved the first prize.” When asked why, he quizzed back, “Don’t you know, this company is making waves around the world?”

The person making the pitch was Deep Sherchan, co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Simplify 360. Simplify 360 is India’s market leading Social Media Analytics company, based in Bangalore. And four out of the six co-founders of the company are Nepalis.

Simplify 360

Simplify 360 suddenly came to prominence as rumors grew in the market that potential buyers like Twitter, Adobe and even WPP (world’s biggest advertising company) were trying to acquire it. This had come on the heels of another similar company called Topsy, the company which makes products to search, analyze and draw insights from conversations and trends on the public social websites including Twitter, being sold for US$200 million at the end of 2013.

The reason for Adobe’s interest was that it really wants to compete with Salesforce – termed the most innovative company in America by Forbes – better, especially in the social media analytics space. Globally, the trend of big companies buying out other companies, across platforms, has been the trend. As a result, Salesforce and Oracle have been doubling down on their social media analytics strategy through acquisitions.

Simplify 360 now offers analytics in over 27 languages and has customers in markets like Korea apart from India, where around one-third of the 200 million Internet users are increasingly posting social media conversations in over 30 languages. It is establishing a strong base in South Africa where it has beaten Oracle in the race for several projects.

The story

Simplify360 was founded on 2009, in Bangalore.

“When I went to India for my studies, I knew I had to do something there. There was such a good buzz about making it big. The slogan of India shining impressed me a lot,” recalls Bhupendra Khanal, CEO and co-founder of Simplify360.

However, gathering a team was far from easy. Before starting Simplify360, Bhupendra started an Analytics Consulting Firm, Marketelligent, as its founding member. Before that, he worked for Global Analytics and Fair Isaac (now FICO) as Marketing Analytics Consultant. Gradually, he formed a team that included his friend, Sweta Sharma (Indian), his friend’s friend Rohit Gupta (Indian), his childhood friend Laxmi Khatiwada (Nepali), his collegemate Binit Thapa (Nepali) and a youngster he knew only through emails, Deep Sherchan (Nepali).

Despite founding the company in 2009, it took them two years to launch Simplify360 platform in the market. That was the birth of the world’s first social marketing suite. Of all the places, he chose to launch it in Chicago. He had landed there with not more than US$1,000 and plans to meet prospective clients and investors.

“It wasn’t easy,” Khanal says, before adding, “I got some very good, some good, and some very bad reviews. That helped us learn a lot. We were convinced that we had to build a world class company.”

What followed were hard times. Apparently, he and his five co-founders went without proper salary for 19 months. “But that helped us work harder. That was the only thing we did,” says Khanal.

“It’s easy to work if the entire team has the same bigger goal. Of course, we have had differences, but these differences melt when everyone wholeheartedly believes in that goal,” says Sherchan, the youngest of the co-founders.

In 2012, the company raised angel funding from Amvensys Capital Group, a Texas-based private equity firm to grow its clientele in the United States.

“By the end of 2013, I had realized that the next Indian elections were going to be the biggest opportunity for us. Due to social media reach to people, they would discuss politics on Twitter, Facebook. The political parties would try to leverage that and we had a good chance of entering there,” says Khanal, the person responsible for the strategic direction of the company. Needless to say, the data mining and presentation has made Simplify360 the market leader in the social media analytics market.

Now bigger global companies are chasing them, but Khanal remains tightlipped about the prospective buyers. He says, “We have PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) as our bank and partner. Hence they deal with the prospective buyers and we can’t divulge much.”

However, he doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to sell it off, millions or billions of dollars notwithstanding, “We’re open for strategic investment but it’s early for outright sale. We’re building Simplify360 to become one of the global leaders,” he says, making you believe that he has to aim higher.

The impact

Simplify360 or Bhupendra Khanal (along with his team) may be a success story of Indian startups. Yet the impact in Nepal is as big, if not bigger. The applause in the above mentioned scene is an example of that impact. Suddenly, Nepali young entrepreneurs have up-scaled their dreams.

“Startup culture is new in Nepal. And Simplyfy360 has been an example that many Nepali tech startups can follow,” says Anil Ghimire, more popularly known as Aakar Anil or Aakarpost in social media. He is a noted blogger and Internet marketing specialist based in Kathmandu. “The story has inspired many. Now they are thinking beyond borders.”

“We get a lot of correspondence from Nepali youngsters. Mainly, they are either looking for career opportunities or mentorship from us,” says Sherchan.
“I think we need to broaden the scope of our market and go global. The first success story of such startup will be a great fuel for our entrepreneurship culture,” says Ankur Sharma, an HCI (Human Computer Interface) expert and owner of the startup UI/UX (User Interface and User Interaction) Studio.

“Many in Nepal tell me about their problems during startup. I tell them, the mistake is yours. Just because there’s a problem, you can’t stop,” says Khanal, adding, “I’m not going to employ anyone just because he’s a Nepali. Merit has to count. If you’re giving the same salary to the best and the worst employee, what’s the motivation for the best to work? He’ll either stop producing, or quit. Then you can’t retain the best people in your company. We need to bring in cultural changes.”

And cultural changes are inevitable if success story (read: hard work behind) of Simplify360 is emulated.



(L-R) Binit Thapa: He is the co-founder and is responsible for building the analytical framework at Simplify 360.

Deep Sherchan: He is the co-founder and is responsible for product management and marketing at Simplify 360.

Bhupendra Khanal:    Bhupendra is the co-founder and is responsible for the strategic direction and corporate vision at Simplify 360.

Laxmi Khatiwada: He is the co-founder and is responsible for finance operations at Simplify 360.

Sweta Sharma: She is the co-founder and is responsible for overall operations at Simplify 360.

Rohit Gupta: He is the co-founder and is responsible for product development technical direction at Simplify 360.

What is Social Media Analytics?

With the growth in social media, a growing number of people are expressing themselves on those networks, whether they are sharing news or their experiences, grievances and happiness. Social media analytics is the practice of gathering data from blogs and social media websites and analyzing that data to make business decisions. The most common use of social media analytics is to mine customer sentiments in order to support marketing and customer service activities. It’s increasingly being used by large companies as a tool to understand their customers in order to find out their complaints about the services and rectifying them as and when needed.

The first step in social media analytics initiative is to determine which business goals the data that has to be gathered and analyzed is going to benefit. Generally, the objectives include increasing of revenues, reducing customer service costs, getting feedback on products and services and improving public opinion (brand image) of a particular product or business division.

Once the business goals are identified, the key performance indicators (KPIs) for evaluation of data are defined. For example, customer engagement might be measured by the numbers of followers for a Twitter account and numbers of retweets and mentions of a company’s name. There are a number of types of software tools for analyzing unstructured data found in tweets and Facebook posts. In addition to text analysis, many enterprise-level social media tools harvest and store the data.

These preliminary Sherpa works lead to the beginnings of what later becomes a different story altogether!

Published  on: 9  May 2014 | Republica