High-tech workers: Is Nepal the new Ukraine?
For many high-tech companies from Israel, which also suffered from manpower shortages, the invasion of Ukraine only exacerbated the problem and sent them looking for new sources of recruitment.
One such, surprisingly, was discovered in Nepal.
Is this a new source for Israeli high-tech workers?
In the meantime, those who have experienced it say mostly good things
Ilana Stotland
10/03/2022
Thursday, 10 March 2022, 15:56 Updated: Friday, 11 March 2022, 08:43
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Are you looking for developer outsourcing in Nepal?
"We started working with Nepal about four years ago. We identified an opportunity," says Nimrod Berger, CEO 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 that the rationale is to achieve quality developers. The best cost that can be, so there is always a kind of pursuit of places that can provide high quality programmers as part of an effective cost versus other solutions. ”
Did you find that in Nepal?
“ In Nepal we found the perfect balance.
There are very high-quality workers with a very suitable character for Israeli industry.
We love creative, hard-working people who think outside the box.
One of their salient advantages is loyalty and identification with the brand.
The employees are identified with the customer they are working for, with the connection we made. "
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Nimrod Berger, CEO of Kavadev (Photo: PR)
The bottom of the barrel
High-tech in Nepal, Berger says, is a relatively young market.
"This is a country of 30 million people. Currently it 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. Enormous 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 and also graduates of international universities, because in Nepal it is very common to make student exchanges. "Local - and" parties "are suitable candidates. It is 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 in an Israeli high-tech company is considered very attractive for 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 recognized option like Ukraine, which was the mainstream in the industry at least until the war. But we are making efforts to get to know this alternative to the people and it is also being passed on by word of mouth. As long as the activity is successful,
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 trekking after the army. 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 client, 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 key 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, Nepal may not become like India in the future in terms of the supply of developers it offers, "but Nepal may well be and will become an actual international development center.
India is number 1 in the world in terms of service providers in every field because of its size. "India, a country of more than a billion people, is a power in this respect. But as mentioned, Nepal also has potential and the evidence of this is more and more Israeli and international companies that have chosen Nepal as a base for team building."
Ron Lieberman, VP of Development and partner in the startup Authomize (Photo: Ben Mizrahi)
The Ukrainian context
"For about two years now we have been working with four developers from Nepal in parallel with four developers from Ukraine," says Ron Lieberman, VP of Development and Partner at Authomize Startup Security Permit
.
We are currently considering the next steps, waiting to see the developments.
If it does not seem to be going in a good 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. "
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 difficult time finding good guys.
The pool of talents there is not large,
In Ukraine I had to do a sorting process like for the 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.
I have a team in Nepal at a price that is less than one degree of key in the country.
In Israel, the cost of a key employer is NIS 50,000-60,000, and even more.
In Nepal the cost to an employer for a developer is $ 2,000-3,000 a month. "
What will happen following 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.
Transferring all the development to Nepal is unrealistic.
"There is also this element that you want to fly, to meet with your developers from time to time, and logistics are easier in Europe."
Roi Kashi, partner, founder and VP of technology at the high-tech company Elsight (Photo: Eden Gabay)
"In fact, one of the difficulties in 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 Kashi, partner, founder and VP of technology at high-tech company Elsight. The
company has a development team in Israel and in Nepal, with whom they started working about two years ago. "When we started outsourcing, it was mainly for tasks with low sensitivity, such as developing the user interface," he says. The corona contributed to this), we learned how to work together, we treated the Nepalese as an integral part of the team, and this eventually allowed us to also 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,
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. "Does not take juniors outsourced. Advance brings those who have experience. In the end, me and someone else from my team in the country also personally interviewed the Nepalese programmers. We gave them home tests, and indeed we found good programmers."
Kashi also adds, "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 programmer you want to take care of and who is employed directly by you. "
The Nepali team of the Moblers company (Photo: Anjan Shrestha)
"We even already give Nepalese developers Israeli names. We call Umesh Manash. Abhishek is called Avi," says Guy Doron, CEO of Moblers, a digital product development company that sets up hybrid teams of both Israeli and Nepalese developers. We have a company 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 that 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.
In contrast, with Ukrainians English is much better and much easier to communicate with.
Although Nepalese have good English but the accent is very heavy and sometimes difficult to communicate.
The other thing is the time differences.
In Ukraine and Israel the time is the same and it is very convenient.
In Nepal, they are four hours ahead, which means that they start working very early and finish relatively early for us. "
Guy Doron, CEO of Moblers (Photo: Merav Alon)
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 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 our Israeli developers. "And 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 here too, it's constantly growing, 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."
The article is also published in Maariv's Business Supplement, Friday 11.3
Of money
Tags
Nepal
Hi-Tech
Ukraine
