IN A country where the word “valuation” is more likely to spark a land dispute than a business pitch, a prime-time television show has become an unexpected cultural event. Every Wednesday and Thursday evening, millions of Nepalis settle in to watch Shark Tank Nepal, a programme where entrepreneurs seek investment under studio lights. In just two episodes, it has achieved something policymakers have long struggled with: making entrepreneurship something to aspire to.
The show premiered on July 2nd with a promise to invest between Rs350-400m in promising businesses. The panel of “sharks” contains five industrialists from some of the country’s largest family-owned conglomerates, covering sectors such as transport, finance and consumer goods. The format, borrowed from the Indian and American versions, is not new. The stakes, however, are uniquely Nepali. Over 20 episodes, 100 entrepreneurs will pitch for capital and, just as importantly, recognition.
Shark Tank Nepal has fast become a sort of classroom. In Nepal where formal business education is scarce, it offers public lessons in entrepreneurship. Viewers are introduced to the language of investment—terms like total addressable market, equity dilution, EBITDA and burn rate—that would otherwise be confined to the few private MBA programmes in Kathmandu. Instead of case studies, the audience sees unfiltered lessons about the realities of running a business.
The show’s entertainment value draws viewers, but its true impact is in showcasing the determination and ambition of Nepali entrepreneurs. Business has never been absent from Nepal, but it has rarely been taken seriously. Entrepreneurship has for years existed on the margins: underfunded, over-regulated and barely discussed in national economic debates. Yet interest is evident. By 2023 more than 315,000 businesses were registered, up sharply from around 276,000 in 2021. Most are small and low-margin, limited by a state that tends to confuse supervision with support.
Government policy continues to hold back productivity. Officially, starting a business in Nepal takes 22.5 days, generous compared with the South Asian average of 14.5 days. In reality the process can stretch into weeks or months, depending on the mood of bureaucrats and the size of bribes. Paperwork is complex and the cost of doing business is more than twice the regional average.
Banks do little to help. Lenders are cautious, focused on collateral, and averse to innovation. Government seed funds, long promised, remain largely unused. Early-stage companies, lacking credit and credibility, tend to fail to grow beyond the founders’ kitchen table. Those that survive must deal with rules created for small shopkeepers rather than scalable enterprises.
In that context, Shark Tank Nepal feels less like entertainment and more like a reckoning with the state of the economy. Entrepreneurs pitching on screen are also making the case for staying in Nepal. The programme gives a voice to a generation of doers who have long lacked one. Policymakers can no longer claim ignorance of what is broken.
The show also show a bigger tension: Nepal has a young, digitally literate workforce but few systems to use it. For years the state has exported its most talented people while importing weak policy ideas. The fallout is a workforce trained more in migration logistics than market entry and more familiar with TikTok tutorials than startups.
India by contrast has embraced its startup boom. Shark Tank India has helped turn entrepreneurship into a national obsession. Public funds, private accelerators and favourable tax policies have followed. Indian companies are exporting modular electric vehicles, AI tutors and agritech platforms. Nepal meanwhile still debates whether a digital signature has legal force.
The difference is more than symbolic. Nepal’s economy is closely linked to India’s. Trade and labour flow freely across the border. Without domestic capital and innovation, however, the Nepali private sector risks becoming little more than a supplier of inputs—cheap labour and raw materials—to Indian value chains.
Whether Shark Tank Nepal can change this is to be seen. The first season is already filmed and the deals agreed. But the programme’s longer-term impact may be in exposing the frictions in the economy. Taken seriously it could provide a rare feedback loop from the market to government.
Politicians would benefit from watching the show: not for amusement but for instruction. They would see that what Nepali entrepreneurs need most is not encouragement but competence; and not speeches but functioning systems. Simple reforms could go a long way. Digitising business registration, easing tax compliance and releasing public seed funds would help. Making it easier to close failing companies and harder for insiders to extract unearned privileges would boost investor confidence. Expanding business education—on television or elsewhere—would produce better-prepared founders. The sharks have spoken. The question is whether the bureaucrats will act. ■
