May 19: New Business Age, one of the leading business magazines of Nepal, has honoured eight startup companies including five best startups of the year during the NewBiz Startup Summit and Awards programme in the capital on Friday.

Doctors on Call, E-Digital Nepal, FOCUS ONE, Ingrails (Ved) and Sajilo Sewa were announced as the five best start-ups of the year from among more than 2000 startup entries during the awards ceremony.

Five of these start-ups have been recognized as the best startup of the year and have been honoured with certificates.

Likewise, Delish Dairieshas bagged the title of the emerging startup of the year for 2023. Similarly, Digital Age Nepal has been awarded with the title of the Inspiring Women-led Startup, while Foodmandu has been honoured with the title of Startup Scale-Up award.

Doctors on Call aims to make home health service accessible, affordable and equitably available to everyone. The start-up is jointly co-founded by Dr Suyesh Karki, Dr Suman Neupane, Dr Subash Sapkota and Dr Mohan Bhandary.

E-Digital Nepal with the vision to digitalise the education ecosystem of Nepal has the mission to bring transformation, innovation, and revolution to the education sector of Nepal with the use of a top-notch technology-based information management system to ensure quality education. Er. Aditya Raj and Er Basant Gupta founded E-Digital jointly with Kapil Basnet.

Likewise, FOCUSONE Payment Solutions Pvt Ltd is a payment facilitator, operating a payment platform that enables MSMEs to accept cross-border / currency transactions from International (VISA, ALIPAY, UPI) and domestic (NepalPay, SCT) networks from a unified QR code, partnering with acquiring banks. Pranaya Rajbhandari and Aadish Shrestha have jointly founded the start-up.

Ingrails Pvt Ltd jointly founded by Nirdesh Dwa, Sujit Pathak and Sanjan Piya offers a digital solution for educational institutions to perform everyday tasks, including academic, financial, operation management, and communication systems in a single platform.

Similarly, Sajilo Sewa is Nepal’s first service marketplace allowing service seekers to find all kinds of at-home services. Kawish Shrestha, Pukar Acharya and Sujeet Regmi have jointly founded the start-up.

Delish Dairies envisions transforming the Nepalese dairy industry with the use of high-quality dairy products from locally produced milk.

Digital Age Nepal, founded by Dibyswory Dhar Dali, aims in combatting financial crimes like corruption and money-laundering, and terror financing through digitization.

Foodmandu, founded by Manohar Adhikari in 2010, is the first company in Nepal that delivers food from more than 120 different restaurants in Kathmandu, Lalitpur, Bhaktapur and Pokhara at the customers’ doorstep.

The shortlisted startups were evaluated on the parameters of articulation of vision/mission statement, value proposition and market identification, team composition and calibre, innovation/disruption, traction-to-date record, scalability and competitive strategy, use of information technology, creation story and jury judgment.

Suman Shakya, founder of Tangent Waves, Juna Mathema, co-founder and managing director of Blitz Media and Tenzin Sonam Gonsar, founder and CEO of TEAM Ventures were the jury members of the award ceremony.

All the winners were given free credit voucher worth Rs 100,000 on Next Generation Rigo HRMS and Rigo Accounting software from Rigo Technologies.

The summit and awards programme was supported by Sastodeal.com, Laxmi Bank, Shikhar Insurance, Citizen Life Insurance, National Life Insurance, Rigo, Nexon EV Max, and City Express. Similarly, Nepal Rastra Bank, the Federation of Nepalese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Nepal Insurance Authority, Nepali Patro and Dishome Fiber Net have also supported the awards program.

New Business Age has been organising various award programs. The company has been selecting and awarding the best management colleges and companies since 2013. Since 2019, the company has started honoring women entrepreneurs. New Business Age had organized the New Biz Business Conclave and Awards programme in November.