COVID-19 & Nepal’s Growth in the Digital Ecosystem: Is COVID crises the boon in disguise for digital Nepal?
-Bipin Ojha
The year 2020 has not been a year of wish for many people. COVID-19 pandemic has hit hard in almost every sector. Everyone is living in chaos with no clue of it getting end anytime sooner. There is one field that has been getting a lot of priority and good business even during the pandemic, Information Technology. This has not just made the provider’s business grow, but also brought a small scale of the digital revolution. This might change the whole scenario of consumer’s behavior before and after the COVID-19.
Nepal has an internet penetration of almost 73% of the total population, according to NTA’s report of Jestha 2077. The mentioned figure might not represent the actual data as a single person using the internet from two or more service providers has been counted as more than one. Just to give you an idea, if you are using two internet-activated sim cards and own a fixed internet connection at home, you will be counted as 3 people. Still among that 73% of internet users, 75% use mobiles. Only the rest of the 25% use other devices. The number of people using the internet only for social media is very high. We can imagine the rough size of actual internet users who use the internet for more than social media: it is low. Users of digital platforms fall under this small portion. The content I want to write today is not about internet penetration, but about the positive effect that the lockdown has brought, a wave that is being created to use digital platforms in Nepal.
- Education Sector:
Almost every educational institutes in Nepal were running a traditional style of education with a physical presence. Though online learning is pretty old in the worldwide context dating back to the 90s, very few academies (like Nepal Open University & internal degree offering colleges) were running in an online platform here in Nepal. But now with lockdown, almost every institute in urban area are adopting online platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Team & others. Many in rural areas are also adopting this platform, however, the lack of broadband connection in a rural area is still a challenging factor to run online classes in those areas.
Training centers, on the other hand, also have started to operate extensively via online platforms. Big private companies have been using online platforms for training since way before the lockdown, but the government training centers (like Nepal Administrative Staff College, Training Institute for Technical Instructor, etc.) and other small training institutes also started to use this platform during/after the lockdown. We can extensively see online preparation (PSC & other educational) classes’ advertisements widely nowadays in our social media.
- e-Commerce Sector:
All of the shops (except essentials) were closed after the announcement of the lockdown. Many shopkeepers went to their villages closing the shops, many were in confusion either to open or not, and the strict timing to open the shop created difficulties for customers. That’s where the e-Commerce companies came into play.
Customer’s preference to shop groceries items online increased rapidly during this lockdown. Companies like MetroTarkari were already there since long ago in the daily groceries & vegetables/fruits business. But because of the lockdown and the government’s policy to give permission to only groceries business made other e-Commerce companies also to turn their modality. Popular e-Commerce site Daraz in collaboration with BigMart brought DMart, FoodMario created a new brand FoodPlus. Other companies like SastoDeal, FoodMandu also got good business in groceries during this period. A couple of government & private companies also started the online business during the lockdown. The government (via Food Management & Trading Company Ltd.) started an online grocery business. The government entering the online business is not a joke in the Nepali context. Private company Gyapu Marketplace was also launched during the pick of a lockdown, has already started to get thousands of orders in a single day and has made itself well established in a very short span of time. Other local businesses also started to take online orders via their social media handles and started to provide home delivery in their locality.
Assurance by the companies for proper sanitization of the products before delivery and digital payment system made customers feel secured to do online shopping.
- Financial Sector:
With the increase of pandemic fear, NRB suggested people use digital banking rather than physical. Banks also got involved in this movement joining hands with each other. No charges to use ATM of any other banks, ease in mobile / internet banking, ease to open an account online have all made it really comfortable for general customers to do their banking works without visiting the bank. One of the big online payment platforms of Nepal, ConnectIPS, waved the transaction cost during the lockdown period, which also helped the customer to do the inter-bank transactions without bearing any charges. Nepal Clearing House Limited, company which runs ConnectIPS, is reportedly now working to make linking bank accounts online – giving another reason not to visit the bank. For the general transactions, we don’t need to visit banks anymore & can do it from our own place, without bearing or with bearing minimum charges.
Also, the use of digital wallets like eSewa, Khalti, IME Pay, Fone Pay& others has been really helpful for customers to pay their regular bills & do the transaction without their physical presence – reducing the risk of getting COVID-19 infection.
Capital Market:
NEPSE and brokers are prioritizing online platform. All those brokers who used to give a lot of stress to create DMAT & Online Secondary Account, are now marketing to open these accounts online. This has made a huge increase in investors in the stock market.
After its launch, NOTS (NEPSE Online Trading System) had only 16,573 clients in its first 14 months till Mangsir 2076. But it got a quick increase to almost 3.5 times (57,156) in just the next 8 months period over the phase of lockdown.
The total number of MeroShare (a web portal to apply primary shares) users was around 6.4 lakhs until the first two years of implementation until Falgun 2076. It is now 8.8 lakhs in just the next 5 months, over the phase of lockdown.
These examples show that it is certainly going to bring changes in consumer’s behavior. Lockdown worked as a booster to increase people’s interest in digital platforms more rapidly. The digital platform is the future, and Nepal can be considered in the late-inception phase with companies mainly focusing only on major cities till now. The number of customers preferring to online will surely increase with time, but the question arises – will the companies update themselves to cater safely to this big growth?
For example, we saw MeroShare going out of service time and again when there were only a little more than 6 lakhs people to apply primary shares of three different companies for 5 days. People may argue with the fact that it’s a government-owned company, so we can’t expect more. But it’s not just a problem with government-based organizations, recently we have seen the data leak issue with big private companies like Vianet and Foodmandu. In order to hop in big numbers of customers in this ever-growing ecosystem in an online platform, companies need to make assurance of privacy, reliability, and ease to customers. Amid of all the negative things going around, improvement in ease of entering into Digital Platforms and its coverage is something to cheer up.
