From Silicon Valley code to Nepali soil

Chapter One

Growing up with the land

I grew up in a farming family in Nepal. I saw firsthand what it means when fertilizer runs short right before planting season, when the market for a season's harvest falls apart, or when a good year is undone by simply low productivity. Farming was not an abstract policy topic to me growing up. It was daily life.

Chapter Two

Three scholarships, one debt

At the same time, I was given an unusual set of opportunities. I received a scholarship funded by the Nepal government to attend Budhanilkantha School, a national school built jointly with the UK government in 1972, which selects about a third of its students each year through a nationwide entrance exam. Later, I received a scholarship to the Pestalozzi International Village Trust in Sedlescombe, England, a charity that has long brought academically strong students from developing countries, Nepal included, into a program built around educating the head, heart and hands together, with the expectation that its scholars return home and put that education to use. After that, I received a full scholarship to MIT, where I studied Management Science and graduated in 2014.

Each of those opportunities came with a quiet sense of obligation attached. I always felt indebted for what I had been given, and I always intended to come back and use it in Nepal.

Chapter Three

Why farmers

After MIT, I spent several years working in the US, first in business operations at Dealix, an Autobytel company, and later as a software engineer, based in Silicon Valley and Boston, USA. But the plan to return was never far from my mind.

When I thought about where to apply that return, agriculture was the clear answer, not just because I grew up around it.

Fixing one input problem, one process, or one market connection does not just help one business. It can support an entire household, and if it works, it scales to many more farms. Coming from a farming family, I already knew which problems were worth solving: fertilizer shortages, unreliable markets, and low productivity were never theoretical to me.

That is the reasoning behind President Agro Tech, and the poultry and chiuri oil ventures alongside it. I also sit on the executive committee of SEBS, the Society of Ex-Budhanilkantha Students.