(Source: conversion.vn)

Nepali market has changed. In the current competitive Nepali market, especially in Kathmandu, you cannot compete while just being a master of one thing that you do; you need to be the effective jack-of-all-trades. There is nothing better than rich pool of tools available on the internet that can help you become the “effective jack” whether you start a small coffee shop in Basantapur or have built an app that teaches all your grandma’s cookbook. Whichever trade you’ve decided to do, these tools can help you become creative and effective in the Nepali market. (Though some of these tools might also be useful for established businesses, I’ve chosen tools that focus more on helping startups in Kathmandu.)

Know your business and attract your investors

 BPlans.com

When you have an idea you want to convert into a business or when you’re starting a new business, there are certain things you should consider to know what all the dimensions of your business is and where your business is heading. BPlans.com provides tons of free templates for different businesses to assist you in writing your business plan and to make sure that you don’t miss out on specific details. Of course, BPlans.com is not going to write the business plans for you. But it has one of the best resources you can explore. These resources include writing a business plan, making a pitch presentation, making SWOT analysis and so on. However, if you have $20 to spare in a month, you can use liveplan.com (run by bplans.com) – an interactive online planner for the whole business planning process.

Marketing

SurveyMonkey

Whether you want to perform a simple poll on what the customers want (cheese pizza with macaroni toppings or just cheese pizza?) or you want to perform an in-depth market research (do males aged 18-26 studying in colleges around Jhamsikhel want your pizza?), SurveyMonkey is the answer for you. It helps you create online surveys that are not only powerful with heaps of features, but also easy-to-use user interface. I prefer SurveyMonkey over Google Forms because it provides an array of different question types and also is integrated with MailChimp. Again, all the features of SurveyMonkey is not free, but the basic free features of SurveyMonkey is relevant enough for startups to exploit in Kathmandu.

MailChimp

Did you know when you send bulk emails from your email account (without using tools), your emails are mostly going to junk folder in the receiving end without being read even once and getting deleted? I didn’t know it either, until someone told me to use MailChimp. It allows you to create customised and personalised email campaigns where you can send bulk emails in one go. The free plan which is “free forever” offers you 2000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month, which I think is ample for startups in the valley.

Keep track of what your customers are saying

Google Alert

What Google Alert does is it sends battalion of its scout division (crawlers) around the universe of global network to search for the keyword or the phrase that you want to search and alert you whenever the keyword or the phrase is mentioned. You can even customise the alert to be immediate, daily or weekly. Through this you can alert yourself when your brand or your product is mentioned in the web – be it on a YouTube video or on a blog post – to know what people have to say about it.  

 Buffer

Once known as “Siri of Social Media”, Buffer is a tool that offers you smarter way to post on social media. When you want to post updates about your business or your products on social media, you would crave for high visibility. For that you need to schedule your posts when most people are using the social media. With a free Buffer account, you can schedule your posts in one Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. Then, you can follow up and see all the replies and stats from each post in a single platform.

Google Analytics

Another web tool by Google mentioned in this. This tool is for startups that focus more on online presence because this tool allows you to analyze website traffic. Simply put, you can discern customer usage of your website ranging from which location the website is visited to which item is clicked the most in your website. If you’re a startup in Kathmandu, you would more likely be interested in learning what people search in your website and to discover which online campaign or platform is bringing you the most traffic.

Collaborate within your business 

Asana

“Individuals don’t build great companies, teams do.” I am borrowing words from Mark Suster of GRP (Global Risk Partners, now known as Upfront ventures) to emphasise why coordination among the teams is important. Asana is the transcendent tool for team co-ordination and task management among the team members. From planning to organising to tracking progress of each task that members carry out, Asana does it simply and elegantly. This makes it the best tool for me that startups in valley MUST try. It’s free for 30 users in one group. So why leave out on such a big opportunity?

Web Development

Wix.com

It doesn’t matter in the modern age if you don’t have programming knowledge when you want a website for your startup or you don’t have the budget to hire a web developer. With Wix.com, you can simply drag-and-drop items and choose from hundreds of free templates to create the website of your choice – whether you’re building an informational website of your company or a sophisticated e-commerce website. (But you should bear in mind that you need to pay for hosting your website.)