While pursuing his MBA, Sajilo Marmat Sewa’s co-founder, Sujeet Regmi, along with his partners, Kawish Shrestha and Pukar Acharya, discovered that customers in the capital were routinely facing problems related to plumbing and service and maintenance of electrical gadgets and appliances.

“Thus, an idea emerged out of a problem. Three enthusiastic Kathmandu University graduates, including myself, decided to solve that problem and began our entrepreneurial journey. Our company got registered in the company registrar's office in Kathmandu in June 2017,” Regmi told the Post.

The trio conducted research which spanned 150 households, 50 organisations, 200 technicians, a few failed companies and industry experts.

“Our research revealed several pain points in various segments of the market. We found that looking for skilled individuals who can provide quality services can be a very time consuming affair for working individuals," said Regmi.

He added, "Additionally, most of the technicians are not able to provide timely service and the quality of service too, is questionable. Also, customers had this perception that while dealing with these so-called skilled technicians, they would get ripped off, almost each time."

Their team also discovered that skilled individuals were not engaged for more than 15-20 days in a month, despite their willingness to work longer and that the Nepali labour market was very unstable and unregulated with absolutely no job security for skilled workers.

Sensing an opportunity whose time had come, the three partners injected Rs300,000 to start the business.

“We raised all the capital, by ourselves. However, in order to scale up our business, we are now seeking investments,” said Regmi.

Sajilo Marmat Sewa specialises in providing new installation and maintenance solutions for commercial buildings and offices. Its specialised technicians provide maintenance services and solutions related to plumbing, electrical appliances, air conditioning, carpentry, computer hardware and computer network.

“Currently, we have 15 backend employees and 73 active skilled professionals working as freelancers, on our platform. Since our inception, we have served more than 10,000 customers and over 170 reputed organisations in Kathmandu. We have had a sales turnover of more than Rs 20 million so far and have created jobs for over 100 skilled professionals. We are sustaining our monthly expenses from the revenue generated,” said Regmi.

At present, he said, their company is still in the start-up phase, experimenting with service delivery processes and the right business models for the market with a view to optimise their service delivery processes. “We are currently providing our services in Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur.”

“In order to make our business cost-effective, we have been providing parts to our customers at subsidised rates. We were able to achieve this by cutting the supply chain in the parts industry here in Nepal. Currently, we are seeking parts from the distributors directly and ensure that we provide our customers the genuine parts with discounts,” said Regmi.

He also said Sajilo Marmat Sewa has come up with different annual maintenance contract packages for its customers. “From our packages, what we have found out from our clients is that they have been able to save up to 35 percent in their maintenance costs.”

Typically, for computer systems, Sajilo's AMC packages start at Rs 500 per PC per month, whereas for an air conditioner, the annual packages start at Rs 1,500 per air-conditioner.

“By 2023, our plan is to become the largest digital service marketplace of Nepal with an annual sales turnover of more than Rs 100 million. We are also looking at having more than 1,000 skilled partners and over 100 full-time staff, besides more than 400,000 household customers and 10,000 corporate customers,” said Regmi.

By 2021, Sajilo Marmat Sewa is aiming to have 250 AMC clients, up from the current 65. “In terms of on call orders, we are targeting to achieve 100 orders per day, by the end of 2021,“ Regmi added.