Anouk Tamrakar On Relocalising Nepali Production & The Growth Of Social Enterprise In Nepal

Anouk Tamrakar Versteeg Is a Nepal-based manufacturing & brand consultant for fashion, home and lifestyle brands who produce artisanal products in South Asia. Anouk works with companies around the world who put qualitative, ethically manufactured products at the heart of their operations. Having lived in South Asia for the past 7 years, she has immersed herself in the local culture and cultivated a solid network of experienced makers and creators.

In April 2017 Anouk Co-founded Timro platform. Timro provides a common platform for local artisans, designers, and entrepreneurs in Nepal. By fostering cooperation between brands and facilitating market access and opportunities, they aim to stimulate innovation, reduce the out-migration of talented young people from Nepal, and increase local pride in "Made in Nepal" products.

Timro Academy is an educational platform for entrepreneurial minds and innovative thinkers that believe in making an impact by choosing people and planet first. Timro aims to provide alternative educational solutions that apply to today's world affordable for everyone.

Anouk discusses the rise of social entrepreneurship and Opportunities For Nepal to Utilise Social Enterprise to recover from natural disasters, the COVID-19 pandemic, and to instigate inter-generational change.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Tom Allen] - Anouk, it's a pleasure to have you here, thanks so much for joining us.

[Anouk Tamrakar] - Thank you for inviting me. I'm very excited!

Can you please share a bit about your background and what led to your passion in social enterprise and living in Kathmandu?

Thank you. After I started social work in the Netherlands, I came to Nepal for the first time 12 years ago. At that time, I worked for an organisation that focused on prevention of sex trafficking and the rescue of under-aged girls out of the sex industry. That's a little bit different to what I'm doing now, but it's always in my heart. I came back to Nepal five years later, and I've now been living in Nepal for seven years. I always knew I wanted to be part of change, but I didn't want to participate in a traditional, (and I'm sorry for my words) and old-fashioned development world, where we have created a heavily reliant culture.

I truly believe that real development is based on self-sustaining financial independency, and not on the constant need of external funding. For me, the answer to that is social entrepreneurship, making an impact by business choosing people first.

That's really the answer to this. This is also the reason why we have created a platform and a space for entrepreneurial minds and innovative thinkers to become social entrepreneurs. I think we really have to understand that supporting young people to become social entrepreneurs doesn't only create financial independency, but they will also be the employers now and in the future, offering the jobs where people come first with a safe work environment, fair wages etc. I've now been living in Nepal for seven years, meanwhile, I got married in Nepal, I also have a Nepali husband, so that keeps me here as well, but I'm very passionate about our work.

You’re the co-founder at Timro, Anouk. It sounds like a wonderful platform. Tell us a little bit more about your organisation's purpose and the sort of work that you're doing there?

Timro means basically ‘yours’. It means ‘yours’ when translated in English, and that is what we really want it to be. It's a platform for everyone. We want it to be really inclusive. At Timro, we aim to work with entrepreneurs and enterprises across income levels, language barriers, economic sectors, and regional divides.

I think it's really important in developing countries that you have to aim to be as inclusive as possible. What we do is two different things, well I would divide it into different things. We are a sales platform where young Nepali entrepreneurs can do the market research, where they can try the products on it at a really low cost.

The only thing we do is take a small service charge and commission, but they get a lot out of it, like it connects to the international market, networking, local markets, and more.

But, while we are growing our sales platform, we did straight away realise that we needed to have an education platform as well. I would say purpose is really to be an inclusive platform for entrepreneurs and enterprises across income levels, language barriers, economic sectors, and regional divides. We want to be as inclusive as possible. As I mentioned before, that is really the purpose to create that support system for entrepreneurial minds and innovative thinkers. I think that is the purpose for me.

Anouk you've worked with a lot of artisans, local designers, manufacturers. What are your observations of the social enterprise movement in Nepal?

We have seen more and more social enterprises rising over the past five years, especially after the earthquake in 2015.

We also do see that a lot of young entrepreneurs find themselves in a generation gap where they have to constantly reflect on their own values, and the ways that elders have done business for the past generations.

In Nepali culture, we have a lot of respect for elders, and this can be very challenging for young people to fight the norms on what business means to them and what business needs today and what a social enterprise means to that. We also still see a lot of fear for opening up communications and ideas that might be copied, and rightfully so, because we do not really have copyrights in Nepal.

We have many issues where artisans don't always send you samples and designs, but use them for other clients for example. It's a process where we are in the red. Social entrepreneurship is a young concept in Nepal.

But, despite all these challenges, we have an amazing, young Nepalese generation that are passionate to make a difference. Young people with innovative ideas that are ready to fight stigmas and norms, and social entrepreneurship might be a young concept to Nepal, but the movement is growing day by day.

Sometimes, so many great initiatives are coming up that I can't even follow them myself. Nepal holds a lot of challenges also in the supply chain, so this was fairly challenging for small SMEs and social enterprises. For example, when you are a start-up, you find yourself often in supply chains where you're between business cartels, agents and middlemen. There are many great challenges, but despite the challenges, many great innovative ideas and ambitious young Nepalese.

That is super exciting.

It's so exciting, that's what keeps me going every day. I wake up excited every day!

That's great. It makes it a little bit easier to do the work you do when you're led by that passion, right?

Yes, of course.

Anouk, you've spoken a little bit about the challenges. You've highlighted the 2015 earthquake and now we have the added impacts of COVID-19, and that's obviously seeing some really big change in Nepal.

I'm keen to hear where you see some of the key gaps and opportunities for social entrepreneurs in the region that you're based right now?

The first thing that really came to my mind was relocalising. I really think as Nepal, we have to just promise that in the future we never see a humanitarian crisis that we see right now again with migrant workers.

More than half a million migrant workers came back to Nepal and are unemployed right now… very much suffering I would say.

I think instead we have to focus on local economies (and) understanding our natural resources, because Nepal has a lot to offer. We have to understand our human resources, because to be honest, a lot of migrant workers that leave are highly skilled people that we can employ in Nepal itself.

We can motivate these people to become entrepreneurs themselves to create better opportunities and local economies. I really see great opportunities there. We need to find a strategy to keep people in Nepal and create dignified employment and safe work environments.

I think that's a great job for social entrepreneurship. Based on the needs of the local and international market, I really believe that the first thing that comes to mind is agriculture. We rely far too much on imports, and we have great soil in Nepal. You can grow anything. This is something that is a great opportunity, but personally I'm very passionate about the supply chain. I think the supply chain holds a lot of opportunities, like for example growing and processing raw materials in Nepal itself. Nepal has great cardamom, hemp and nettle that we can actually process and then make into yarn and sustainable textiles. This can all be done also outside of Kathmandu, in areas where we have a lot of returning migrants.

I think this is something that offers great potential. I do really believe in dreaming big, and I would love to see Nepal as a leading country in the supply of sustainable textiles and yarn. I really believe that that is feasible.

These are two of the things that really come to my mind, but there are some others as well. I think there are still opportunities in tourism as well. I also do believe coffee is one of the great opportunities for social entrepreneurs. The whole digital world is of course one of those.

Absolutely. I'm sure you'll unpack a little bit more of this during this year's Social Enterprise World Forum, which is the first year that the forum is going to be fully online, and you're a speaker there. With over 4,000 entrepreneurs that are expected to attend, what are you most looking forward to about SEWF Digital?

I think it's a great opportunity. As much as I love to meet physically, I think it's great to have a digital platform. What I am most excited by is to learn about upcoming social enterprises globally, from like-minded people.

As I mentioned to you before, I listened to your podcast with Rashvin yesterday [from Malaysia], and I just felt so connected to his story. I think that is something amazing about the event, that we connect with like minded people. I'm super excited about that this year.

Absolutely. It's going to be a great place to meet a bunch of social entrepreneurs with a whole heap of inspiring projects and initiatives. Speaking of which Anouk, I'm really keen to hear about some of those social enterprises or projects that you've come across recently, which you believe are creating some great positive social change?

I want to actually do a shout out to one of the social enterprises in Nepal that I'm really impressed by, and they have been doing great work during the whole COVID-19 situation as well, and it's called Kokroma. Kokroma is a fairly young social enterprise that started I might say one and a half years ago.

Kokroma makes children and baby clothes based on traditional Nepali designs, but it's inspired by Finnish baby baskets and maternity packages. Where they are very different is that the fabrics they use are woven in prison, which creates an income for prisoners so they can send the money home for their families. All the fabrics and yarn used are dyed, and then their baby clothes are made in a workshop where they empower women from underprivileged backgrounds. During the lock down, instead of sitting back, (this is really amazing), she started first making masks as many others do as well.

I think one or two weeks after the lock down started (this is an experience I had with Kokroma during the lock down), one of my friends was distributing food packages in the family and she cried. She said to me, "Anouk, there is a big forgotten group. There are all these young, pregnant women who just have given birth and there is nothing.”

“There's people that often live from what the street has to offer. But, with the 100% lock down, there is nothing to offer on the streets. There are babies born beside the road without even a cloth to have the baby."

I called Kokroma, we talked about it and she already does baby clothes. We have set up a fund, and don't ask me how, but within two days the first maternity packages were delivered to my friend, and we have been delivering together and with other sponsors and funds to deliver maternity packages all over the country during the lock down. She has made, with 10 women working, 10,000 thousand masks in one week. I think that is so impressive. She really knew how to use this. She really became super innovative during this time. I think that is where it's all about. I'm so impressed, it's a great initiative, and it's very important.

It sounds great.

To finish off then Anouk, what books would you recommend to our listeners?

As an entrepreneur myself, I once got a recommendation to read a book called The Messy Middle, which is not only a book just to read from the beginning till the end, it becomes a guide. I think The Messy Middle basically talks about that time of starting your business, and that point where you are not a start-up anymore but start to grow and build your institution. You come in this space the author describes as ‘The Messy Middle’, and this is not something that as an entrepreneur, we all end up in that space. Instead of being fearful about it, I think we should embrace it, learn from it, accept that we all come in that space of ‘The Messy Middle’.

I think this book is just a great guide for all start-ups and social entrepreneurs. Also, because I think for a social entrepreneur talking about ‘The Messy Middle’ it's even more complicated than any other business. I think Rashvin spoke a little bit about it in your other podcast, we have so many levels of values, social impact, and how we measure impact. We have so many more aspects we think about. Having a guide, especially for that complicated time that is called ‘The Messy Middle’ is amazing. Scott Belsky also has great videos, and he's also someone who does Ted Talks. I just think it's great.

He is quite inspirational, and he was the founder of 99u.com. There’s a whole bunch of different sources there, particularly for people at that student stage of their journey.

We're very much looking forward to seeing you at SEWF Digital this year, and we would like to thank you for your generous insights and times today, and we'll look for the tracking the journey.