Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

The idea is based on a couple of observations.

• I have hired an editor in Nepal and worked with him for a couple of months. He helped me write better. The way I found him was through friends, but not necessarily everybody in Nepal or Nepalis abroad has access to good quality English editors.
• Friend’s sister, who recently came to the U.S., uses her gym instructor from Nepal for bi-weekly gym sessions. He looks at her posture and provides feedback and guidance. I’ve actually heard it from quite a few people that they were using gym instructors from Nepal and India.
• On the other hand, many “Richie Rich” Nepali kids pay upto tens of thousands of rupees per session to prepare for college application or tuition.
• Graduates of decent colleges in the U.S. could provide college application guidance to Nepali students for quite a decent sum of money.
• Many Nepali families with kids in the U.S. and abroad their kids to learn Nepali, but don’t have a Nepali class nearby, and they don’t know how to properly teach their kids Nepali to a proper serious instructor.

I see an opportunity. The domain of this project is limited only to Nepali people.

The idea is to create a marketplace for service providers and customers whose service can be provided online. That means editors, gym instructors, language teachers, cultural experts, consultants, college application instructors, tuition teachers, and so forth.

The arbitrage is that the location of the service provider is physically separate from their customers, and they don’t necessarily have a place where they can meet each other.

• But what is to force them to use the platform and its online chat offering and not to use that as the location for initial screening and meeting and do their transaction offline?

• International payments are complicated. If I wanted to pay a Nepali teacher in Nepal it would be extraordinarily difficult for me if I didn’t have a hawala connection to pay. Even harder is if somebody in Nepal wanted to be a service provider abroad. They would have to pay in U.S. dollars, and again, it would be a situation. So, payment would be one value proposition.

• The other reason is the quality of service provided or if service was provided. Somebody reserves a session for $500, and they get their session. It is extraordinarily useful. They have a great time and learn a lot, but then they realize they can claim that it actually never happened, and they want their money back. The service provider is not protected. They clearly and transparently provided service, but they were not paid for it.
• How do you protect the service provider? By making sure that they are consistently using the platform, and therefore the customer cannot contest usage.

• The other advantage would be marketplace ratings and so forth.

• Could also discover services that are harder to find. If I wanted to start a business in Nepal from abroad, where on Earth am I going to find a business consultant? What is the process of reaching out to them and talking to them? What’s the pricing even? A viable, trustworthy marketplace where I can shop across multiple business consultants and have a clear understanding of their capacity, long-term pricing, and evaluate them through the conversations. That would make for a great service.

• They don’t have to use the platform for purchasing the services either, for example. Where would I find a travel agency that would schedule an entire package trip for me and 20 of my best friends? Or what about a wedding planning company? If I was able to directly talk to them and figure shit out, that would be quite clear.
• The shopping problem is not solved.
• It’s all about marketing.
• These wedding planners exist on Instagram.
• They would have to move to that new platform.
• What exactly would make them maintain a presence in yet another platform, except a Zoom call interface that anybody can create?
• Is that really a valuable/important proposition?

• Must think more, much meat in this idea

• Must expand on this in the future!