Meeting Jagan And Kiran

Today started off like any other day: breakfast in the hotel, emails, lunch on the streets of Pokhara at whatever restaurant caught our eye. From there on, however, the itinerary of the day was dramatically different from other days. We met Jagan shortly after arriving back from lunch (he picked us up at our hotel), and drove to see his workshop and store. Jagan’s computer store has kept up to the times remarkably well, especially for a town which is a good seven hours from Kathmandu. His store stocks all kinds of end-user computer components (as opposed to a wholesale hardware-level supply store), from brand name PCs (Dell desktops and Acer seemed to be in the most demand) as well as computers assembled in his shop. He also stocked everything from uninterruptable power supplies to generators to printers to ink and toner refills: his products seemed to have offices in mind (the name of the store is Himalayan Office Automation). His store started going on twenty years ago, when they could supply everything computer related: since then, however, the market has changed so that any one store cannot hope to keep every product in stock. Jagan made the decision to only sell ready-to-use computer and office products at this retail outlet.

He then took me to a computer repair center he operates which also seems to be quite popular: the floor had a number of people working on it who were efficiently fixing client’s computers. We sat down for a few minutes to talk about the computer project I am working on in Nepal (I had been awkwardly carrying around a keyboard, mouse, power cable and computer through the streets of Pokhara up until this point). I talked about the history of the project, starting from my senior project at HKIS up until the present date; the solutions we had to a number of IT problems in Nepal as well as the hurdles that lay ahead. Jagan is very knowledgeable in the computer market today, so getting feedback was excellent. He seems to be interested in the project, especially the commercial side of things. We discussed using profits made from retail sale of the computers to help fund computers donated to schools around Nepal. Jagan not only has a successful business but an interest in giving back to society (we are arranging a trip to the school he went to as a child, it is on the peak across from the ridge line we summited yesterday).

After this Jagan took us to meet Kiran. Kiran owns and operates a textile store, a textile material shop, and a very successful mineral water bottling operation in Western Nepal (the water we bought to take on the hike yesterday was actually the brand made by Kiran’s company). Kiran, dad and I enjoyed talking about information technology and computers in Nepal over a cup of chai (during which the power cut off). Kiran invited dad and I to be guests at a local Rotary International meeting that night, to which we gladly agreed.

After meeting up with a mutual friend of Jagan and Kiran, we went to a lakeside hotel for the Rotary International meeting. While the meeting was in Nepali, we were asked to write our names and occupation on a sheet of paper. I wrote “Charles Watson, student” and passed it to the district governor, and listened intently to the conversations happening in Nepali, without a clue of what was going on. Suddenly, I realized they had switched to English just as they said “Steven and Charles Watson” with a brief round of applause, and invited us to give a few words. Dad talked about his job in Hong Kong and I talked about the rationale behind the project in Nepal; a unique market in the technology market today. Big box manufacturers worry generally about speed and cost, not power consumption — the electrical grids in places like South Korea, Taiwan and America are developed to the point where electrical consumption (in desktops) is not really considered. The only model of computers where electrical consumption is considered would be the laptop sector, a market which also places a premium on miniaturization, weight and portability (driving up cost at equal performance with desktop machines). Because of the failure of big box computer manufacturers to design a computer that would fill the niche market of Nepal, specifically the educational sector, it was up to the individuals — whether they were recent high school graduates or Rotarians with thirty years of experience in the computer industry — to step up to the plate and design and implement a computer custom tailored to Nepal.

Because of the interest in the project, Jagan has organized a tech demo tomorrow after lunch, with a number of Rotarians expressing interest in attending. This will be an excellent way to spread awareness of the current state of the technology market; the Rotarians in attendence expressed doubt that I could bring new computers to Nepal for any less than $500 USD (for reference, I am estimating the per-unit cost of these computers to be around $250, including shipping and taxes, without monitor mouse and keyboard).

After the Rotary International meeting, we met with Jagan and Kiran’s wives and went out to dinner at the “Nutty Nuts Cafe”. It was the only fine dining establishment I have ever been the patron of which featured Dreamwork movie screenshots as wall art. My favorite was the still frame from the somewhat recent “Bee Movie”, starring Jerry Seinfeld.

After dinner we got a ride back to the hotel from Jagan for a late night’s sleep. As we climbed the stairs to the hotel room, I was excited about the tech demo tomorrow; brainstorming in my head all the points I’d like to make and the features I’d like to present. We’ll see how it goes!

That’s all for now.
Charles