Feature: Female entrepreneurs among Nepal's rising business stars

With females now holding the powerful posts of president and parliament speaker, Nepalese women in nonpolitical spheres are elevating themselves in the business community, a realm also traditionally dominated by men, and making their voices heard.

The first International Women's Trade Fair, which kicked off here Friday, gives Nepal's businesswomen a chance to show the outside world what they have achieved along their tough journey to become independent from their male peers and self-reliant.

Darshana Sherestha is the managing director of Nature Nepal, a manufacturer of handicrafts and herbal products. At the fair she is showcasing and selling eight kinds of soap made from different organic plants including rose, honey, neem, fresh mint, and such like. Some of the soaps she is offering are made from other natural products, like yak's milk and honey.

The female entrepreneur owns a small factory where four female staff are making these daily sanitary necessities in the capital of Kathmandu and have been producing the popular products for around six years.

Her simple, well-packaged and quintessentially Nepalese-styled products are still not available overseas. But Sherestha, also an executive member of the Federation of Women Entrepreneurs Association of Nepal (FWENA) that organizes the fair, told Xinhua that she prefers to sell them directly to her clients.

"It seems a very tough road to choose. They lack opportunity, market demand, capital and support from the government," said Rita Bhandari, president of FWENA, at the fair's inauguration ceremony.

According to Bhawani Rana, vice president of the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI), the largest private-sector organization in Nepal with over 10,000 members, although women's involvement in business is on the rise, there are no surveys on the current status of enterprises owned by women.

A survey conducted five years ago, however, revealed the number to be around 4,000.

In a recent interview with Xinhua, co-founder of FWENA Bhawani Rana said women are largely limited to micro and small enterprises, because they faced difficulties in obtaining bank loans, as Nepal is a patriarchal society where most properties and land are registered in men's names.

According to the veteran business lady, another factor that prevents women from handling bigger enterprises might be their conservative personalities.

"Culturally, they feel they can't make big decisions independently without permission or suggestions from male members in their family," Rana said.

A lack of marketing skills has also hindered the growth of female entrepreneurs in Nepal, she added.

At one of the 75 stalls -- 10 of which showcase female entrepreneurs from South Asian countries and the Philippines -- a special white tea whose quality, according to its producer Ashwini Agrawal, is exceptional but doesn't sell well owing to marketing issues.

Agrawal, who has been in the tea business for more than 40 years, runs a tea factory in the Ilam district in eastern Nepal and among his 25 employees, 22 are local women.

Ashwini Agrawal, also the president of the Nepal Tea Association, said how to market their products is a big challenge, admitting that his high-quality white tea has no exposure to foreign tourists visiting Nepal, and the company's business model is far away from exporting their products to potential customers overseas.

The tea virtuoso said the net weight of one white tea bag is 25 grams and they sell for 200 Nepalese Rupees (about 2 U.S. dollars). He added that this prices are expensive for local Nepalese customers, but it is only one-quarter of the same tea produced in India, because Indian companies have access to overseas markets and can export large quantities.

While launching the expo, Nepalese President Bidya Devi Bhandari said, "It is good to see that Nepalese women, who in the past were confined to their homes, are now entering the business mainstream."

As the fair has revealed, however, while female talents and their products certainly exist, there is still a long way to go until businesswomen are supporting half the commercial skies above the Himalaya nation. Endit