For Fresh, Female Entrepreneurs
उध्यमी महिलाहरुका लागी
In a society which does not encourage women to take chances and risks, #MakerKT wants to equip female entrepreneurs with practical skills required to make their ventures more successful in a resource-strapped city like Kathmandu. #MakerKT regularly conducts DIY workshops with women to get them to use more tools, be more independent and empowered by their abilities. In the spirit of independence and self-reliance, we offered a month-long series of workshops this Mangsir (mid-Nov to mid-Dec) focussed on entrepreneurship for women called “#MakerKT’s SheEO Series: For Fresh, Female Entrepreneurs”.
There were eight workshops in total, which had to be registered for individually.
Through this series, we want to boost the entrepreneurial potential of women whether their business is at the ideation phase, seed phase or expansion phase. This workshop series was made possible with funding from the Global India Fund.
The series was launched on 2nd Mangsir (Nov. 18th) with a panel discussion about ‘What it takes to be a SheEO’ and a short ‘Yoga for Workaholics’ session in the Mazlis Hall in Yala Maya Kendra.
The first workshop was about Building Great Customer Relationships, conducted by Bhumi Ghimire. The venue was provided by Blitz Media. It was an interactive session where the participants discussed good and bad customer service practices, identified the loop holes in customer oriented businesses and had big laughs acting out various customer relationship scenarios.
The second session was about Kickstarting Your Business, which was split into two parts: Legal and Accounting and was conducted in the FNCCI premises. Shraddha Bhattarai conducted the legal section of the workshop where she addressed the various entities available to entrepreneurs, their pros and cons and tax and legal implications as well as important agreements which they ought to consider drafting for their business. Meanwhile, Subhekchhya Shrestha conducted the accounting section where she impressed upon the participants the importance of keeping detailed accounts, saving all bills and also went through a hands-on exercise where they generated their income statement and balance sheet as well as learning some excel shortcuts in the process.
Acing Your Business Pitch was the third session, conducted in Antarprerana. It started with Haushala Thapa sharing her expereinces about what it takes to build partnerships and sell your idea. Amuda Mishra then built on top of what Haushala shared and explained the elements of an elevator pitch (the most memorable being the ‘Wow. How. Now’ concept) and made the participants work on a 3 minute pitch of their business or idea. In the next session, the participants then refined their pitch and made a one minute pitch. Next, they edited their pitch with the objective of attracting investment. This one minute pitch was then delivered to Nikita Bajracharya who then gave them feedback on their pitches.
In the fourth workshop Create Your Own Website, the participants spent two days familiarising themselves with WordPress and working to build a website with their own custom-made domain name. The session was conducted by Shivani Chettri and Monalisha Dhimal and the venue was provided by Women Lead. The participants learnt how to navigate the dashboard, personalise their theme, install plugins and widgets and create galleries. The SheEO Series has covered domain registration and hosting expenses for a year.
The next workshop was Identify Your Brand which had two separate instructors for each session and was held at Haushala Creatives. The first session, conducted by Juna Mathema, was focussed on developing themselves and their business/idea as a brand. The participants worked on personifying their brand as well as learning how to represent yourself as your brand and networking tips. The second session, conducted by Aayusha Shrestha, built upon the first session and expanded to focus on the various design elements of the brand including colour, shape, size and fonts as well as the S.M.A.R.T approach to branding.
The sixth workshop was Successful Digital Marketing, conducted by Saniaa Shah and held in Rockstart. It was one of the most popular workshops of the series, with registrations having to be closed early! The participants learnt the tips and tricks of digital marketing, as well as going in-depth about facebook marketing, SEO, SEM and email marketing. They also worked in groups to come up with digital marketing strategies for four separate brands.
App Making for Dummies was our seventh workshop and was conducted by Pradita Pradhan and Prathana Khakurel and held in Nepal Communitere. The participants together learnt how to navigate App Inventor and make their mobile phones do fun things like speak, respond to their voice or even respond to shaking by taking a photo or saying ‘Stop shaking me!’ or even ‘Shake it shake it baby’! (Apparently the participants also had a lot of fun sharing this knowledge at home and spending hours laughing by making the phone say and do silly things 🙂 ) They then worked on a prototype app for their business, with details such as searching for location, expanding details, calling their number, redirecting to a website and a FAQ section. The participants were also able to save the apps they made on their phone for them to use if they chose to.
The last workshop, our eight, was Mobile Video Making Made Easy conducted by Rewati Gurung and was held in Karkhana (the birthplace of #MakerKT!). After learning about what to keep in mind when filming a video, the participants used two apps, Viva Video and Adobe Premier Clip, to make videos. These videos were shared with the class for feedback with Rewati insisting that the participants be as critical as possible, because only then they could all improve. The participants also worked in pairs to create a 30 seconds video using all the tips they’d learnt so far.
And, with that, came the end of a workshop-packed Mangsir 2074. Once we have our follow-up sessions in Magh, we will be officially wrapping up the SheEO Series 2074 🙂
*All photos (except for those of Acing Your Business Pitch) by Briony Mercurie. Photos for Acing Your Business Pitch by Sabrina Dangol.
I’m very interested in Business Kickstart workshop but seats are already booked. Can you please somehow manage seat for me??