Everyone asks me the same question. Nepal ma kun business sabai bhanda ramro?
Nobody answers it with a number. They answer it with an opinion — start a shop, start a school, do imports, do IT. And you cannot check an opinion.
So I went and got the numbers. Nepal Sarkar already counted every business in the country in its Economic Census. Every figure below comes from there, and every one of them is an ausat — an average. Hold that word, because it is where most people go wrong.
Nepal ma kun business le kati kamauncha?
Average monthly profit, by industry:
| Industry | Ausat nafa / mahina |
|---|---|
| Education (school) | Rs 2,53,900 |
| Swasthya (health) | Rs 1,16,500 |
| Krishi (agriculture) | Rs 1,14,800 |
| Manufacturing | Rs 79,800 |
| Pasal (shop) | Rs 43,500 |
| Hotel / restaurant | Rs 23,700 |
| Anya seva — gym, salon, parlour | ~Rs 14,000 |
Read the top and the bottom together. A school averages roughly six times what a shop does, and about eighteen times what a gym, salon or parlour does.
That last row is the one people find hardest to believe, because it is the row with the most shops on every street in Kathmandu. Rs 14,000 a month, on average.
Tara yo number le kehi pani bhandaina
Here is the part that matters more than the table.
These are averages, and an average is not a ceiling.
Baje ko Sekuwa is in that hotel and restaurant row — the Rs 23,700 row. So is every struggling khaja ghar in the country. The average tells you what the middle of a category looks like. It tells you nothing about what the top of that category earns, and nothing at all about what you would earn in it.
If you pick a business off this table, you have made a decision using a number that describes other people.
Sabai business euta nai ho
Once you look at these industries closely, the differences stop being interesting.
Every business, without exception, needs the same four things:
- Demand — someone who already wants this
- Marketing — they find out you exist
- Sales — they decide to pay you
- Product — what they get is worth it
A school needs all four. A gym needs all four. A manufacturer needs all four. What changes between industries is only how hard each one is, and that is a feature you can choose, not a law you obey.
Nepal Electricity Authority does no marketing at all — demand is guaranteed, so that lever does not exist for them. A new gym has to fight for every single member. Same four levers, completely different difficulty.
Pasal ma paisa kina bachdaina?
This is the second question I get most, and it has nothing to do with which industry you chose.
Money does not stay in a shop because easy to start and easy to profit are two different things, and they are usually inverse. A shop is the easiest business in Nepal to open. That is exactly why the margins are thin — everyone can open one, so everyone did.
The thing that made it easy to start is the same thing that makes it hard to profit.
Sarkar le kun business lai chhut dincha?
Tax is not the same across industries. From the FY 2083/84 budget, income tax by sector runs at 30%, 25%, 20%, 15% and 12.5% depending on what you do — banking and telecom at the top, several priority sectors at the bottom.
There is also a Rs 75.4 arab subsidised loan pool the government has set aside.
I mention this not because tax should pick your business — it should not — but because a lot of people pay the top rate without ever checking whether their sector qualifies for something lower.
Saccho prashna — kun business haina, tapai
After all of that, here is what I actually think.
"Kun business ramro?" is the wrong question. The table above proves it. If the answer were simply "open a school", every school in Nepal would be profitable, and they are not.
The right question is narrower and harder:
- What do you already know that most people do not?
- Who already trusts you?
- Which of the four levers are you actually good at?
- How long can you survive before this pays you?
A business is not good or bad in the abstract. It is good or bad for a specific person, with specific skills, and a specific amount of runway.
The census tells you what the middle looks like. It cannot tell you where you'd land, and you should not let it try.
Every figure here is from Nepal Sarkar's Economic Census and the FY 2083/84 budget. All profit figures are averages. The full walkthrough, industry by industry, is in the video.