Are you already looking for developer outsourcing in Nepal?
“We started working with Nepal about four years ago. We recognized an opportunity,” he says Nimrod BergerCEO of Kavadev, which provides outsourcing solutions in Nepal to Israeli high-tech companies.
Berger, who also serves as Nepal’s honorary consul in Israel, explains: “The rationale is to get quality developers at the best cost possible, so there is always a kind of pursuit of places that can provide high quality programmers as part of an effective cost over other solutions.”
Did you find it in Nepal?
“In Nepal we found the perfect balance. There are very quality employees with a very suitable character for the Israeli industry. We like creative, hardworking people who think outside the box. One of their salient advantages is loyalty and identification with the brand. Employees are identified with the customer they work for, with connection That we did. “
The bottom of the barrel
High-tech in Nepal, Berger says, is a relatively young market. “This is a country of 30 million people. It currently has several tens of thousands of employees in the field. There have been several years of activity of American and Australian high-tech companies, and we too have joined this trend. We are really scratching the bottom but we see the potential. It is huge and inexhaustible. “
How do you locate these employees?
“We are active in Kathmandu, the largest metropolis in Nepal. Our employees are graduates of universities and colleges in Nepal in the relevant fields, as well as graduates of international universities, because in Nepal it is very common to make student exchanges. “Local placement – and ‘parties’ are suitable candidates. It’s not easy, but we are growing every month. This market is growing all the time. Many times I also take an employee from another place, because working for an Israeli high-tech company is considered very attractive to them.”
Berger says that the company currently has three development centers in Kathmandu with about 200 employees, and dozens of Israeli companies use their services. “Developers from Nepal are not yet a familiar option like for example Ukraine, which was mainstream in the industry at least until the war. But we are making efforts to get to know this alternative to people, and it is also passed on by word of mouth. As the activity is successful, people tell each other.”
Companies looking for developers are not skeptical about this option?
“I think people are more curious than skeptical. People still perceive Nepal as a place for post-military trekking. To me it seems the most natural thing in the world. I strongly believe in this country.”
According to Berger, his demand for Nepalese developers has risen by hundreds of percent following the war in Ukraine. “Yesterday, for example, we were in a first conversation with a customer, who uses the services of Ukrainian developers. Now, in light of the situation, he wants to diversify, not put all the eggs in one basket.”
Money, Berger argues, ultimately speaks. “In Israel, the average employer cost of a Full Stack developer is about $ 13,000-14,000, in Ukraine $ 6,500-7,000, while in Nepal it is $ 3,500. Working with Nepalis drastically reduces costs,” he says.
What about their professional level?
“The way it works is that in the end the Israeli client interviews the developer and performs the actual recruitment. He may need to interview more, not recruit the first or fourth. Our candidates definitely meet the criteria of companies in Herzliya Pituach and Rothschild. I am also in love with their character, they Honest, loyal. “
According to Berger, while Nepal will not become like India in the future in terms of the supply of developers it will offer, Nepal certainly “may be and will become an actual international development center.
“India is number one in the world in terms of service providers in every field, because of its size. There is no doubt that it is impossible to reach the dimensions of India, a country of more than a billion inhabitants, which is a power in this respect. And internationalities that have chosen Nepal as a base for team building. “
The Ukrainian context
“For about two years we have been working with four developers from Nepal in parallel with four developers from Ukraine,” he says Ron Lieberman, VP of Development and partner in the startup Authomize, which deals with security of permissions. “Currently two developers from Ukraine have managed to escape from the country, and two others are stuck in the country and we are very concerned about them. We are currently considering the next steps, waiting to see the developments. If it does not seem to be going in the right direction there, we will have to look for more developers elsewhere – in Europe or Nepal. In Nepal we interviewed quite a few people. “It’s harder to find talent in Nepal, it’s harder to find people with many years of experience compared to other countries, but we found some very good ones.”
Ron Lieberman (Photo: Ben Mizrahi)Lieberman adds: “I think most companies choose to take Nepalis on tasks that require relatively low skill. We were actually looking for developers, so we also had a relatively hard time finding good guys. The pool of talent there is not large, unlike Ukraine where there is talent and competition was like In Ukraine. In Ukraine I had to do a sorting process like for Israelis, finish it within a few days, otherwise the worker would have been kidnapped. In Nepal as mentioned we also found good people, but it was difficult. Nepalis are known to be very cheap. These are salaries that are 1/5 of Israel. “A team that costs less than one key in Israel. In Israel, the cost of a key employer is NIS 50,000-60,000, and even more. In Nepal, the cost of an employer per key is $ 2,000-3,000 per month.”
What do you think will happen in the wake of the war in Ukraine?
“If the war continues, most companies will look to move to another place in Central Europe, where the mentality will be similar to Ukraine and prices will be similar to Ukraine. Moving all development to Nepal is unrealistic. There is also this element you want to fly, meet with your developers occasionally, and logistics Easier in Europe. “
“In fact, one of the difficulties with working with outsourcing in general is the level of confidence you have in exposing the technology to people you don’t see in the office on a daily basis,” says Roy KashiPartner, Founder and VP of Technology of the high-tech company Elsight, which provides communication solutions for unmanned tools.
Roi Kashi (Photo: Eden Gabay)The company has a development team in Israel and in Nepal, with which they began working about two years ago. “When we started working with outsourcing, it was mainly for tasks with low sensitivity, such as developing the user interface,” he says. “Over time we gained confidence in this way of working (the corona also contributed to this), we learned how to work together, we treated the Nepalese as an integral part of the team, and that eventually allowed us to expose them to deeper layers within the code. We currently have five developers in Nepal.”
Why did you choose Nepal?
“Absolutely because of the price. When we look at a good Nepali programmer, the cost to his employer is much lower than parallel programmers in Eastern Europe.”
Are you satisfied with their level?
“For startups looking to develop cloud products for example, then there is no significant difference in the level of Nepalese developers compared to their counterparts. In the product envelope there is no significant difference in capability. “I do not outsource juniors at all. I bring in advance those who have experience. In the end, I and someone else from my team in Israel also interviewed the Nepalese programmers in person. We gave them home tests, and indeed we found good programmers.”
“Also,” adds Kashi, “we have an interest in them being satisfied and staying for a long time. So part of that is to ask for example the key: ‘Would you like to experiment with additional technologies? What else interests you?’. The concept is to look at subcontractors’ programmers. Like the programmer you want to take care of and who is employed directly by you. “
“We even already give Nepalese developers Israeli names. We call Umesh Manash. Abhishek is called Avi,” he says. Guy Doron, CEO of Moblers, a digital product development company that sets up hybrid teams of Israeli and Nepalese developers. “For example, a company comes to us with a project. We are raising a team of developers for the benefit of the same project. The team is a hybrid: some Israelis sit with us in the office, and some sit in Nepal, “he explains.” We have been working in this way for three years. Before that we worked like this with Ukraine. We had a very hard time in Ukraine because we felt that they did not care so much about the project, were not really dedicated to us. We felt they were smearing us at times. It’s a little hard for me to say this now that their situation is like this, but it’s the truth. In the Nepalis I found much more caring, devotion to us, a desire to help. The staff in Nepal is also cheaper than in Ukraine.
Guy Doron (Photo: Merav Alon)“On the other hand, for Ukrainians English is much better and it is much easier to communicate with them. Nepalis do have good English but the accent is very heavy, and sometimes difficult to communicate. The other thing is the time difference. In Ukraine and Israel the time is the same, which is very convenient. Come on, that means starting work very early and finishing relatively early for us. “
Not yet mainstream
Currently in favor of Moblers projects Nepal employs 12 developers, “and we will grow in three more,” says Doron. “The ones we recruited are at a very high level. Although there is another company that supposedly rents them their services, the actual recruitment we do ourselves. We definitely have a pleasant organizational atmosphere, and sometimes a feeling that they are really sitting here. A company that does development through us, communicates with Israeli developers “We do not have to communicate with the guys from Nepal. They can, but we give them the convenience, we give them an Israeli project manager.”
Hiring the services of developers from Nepal is not yet mainstream, Doron admits. “I think it’s also quite new in Nepal. Now it’s in the early stages there. It’s not too familiar, but I believe it’s going to grow. I see it in us too, it’s constantly growing,” he says, noting that because of the corona he has not yet met The guys face to face. But soon, he promises, there will be a joint meal at Zoom, and towards the end of the year “we will probably go to them too.”
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