By Alisha Tuladhar

FreshStart

By Alisha Tuladhar

BUSINESS PLAN:FRESHSTART

I.Executive Summary

“Are you a refugee? Are you willing to self-learn about your rights, about necessary skills and about job-vacancies for refugees? Try FreshStart app to start revive your life. Cause the world cares.”

Refugees need more than just food. While immediate needs like food and shelter are necessary, education, employment and the sense of equality is equally vital, especially in the long-run. These 3E’s are the core focus of the app: FreshStart.

EqualityEducation Employment

When the user enters the app, they will have access to these features. The main motive is for the users to self-educate themselves about refugee rights, education materials and job vacancies especially catered for refugees. The main focus of the app is to provide them with a long term benefit solution.

While this idea is feasible with a help of local partners like NGOs, INGOs and businesses willing to provide employment to refugees, financials also need to be considered. This proposal requests a seed-funding of 2345 USD *subject to change.

Moreover, the initial market would be Nepalese market as the founder would set up the firm here with growth plans in the South Asian region. Nepal compromises 36,000 refugees while India has 200,000. Expanding the app service to India is a second stage growth strategy.

II.The Initiative

Purpose of the project:

Refugees, are very similar to us, the only difference is, they were obliged to leave their nation and seek for asylum in a foreign land. This scenario itself raises questions of where they will stay, what they will eat and how they will survive. While these might be the immediate needs, they need more than food. They need a resources to reestablish their new lives in a foreign land.

Solution:

Hence in an effort to reestablish refugees’ lives, FreshStart is an educational mobile app for the refugees to use. This mobile app mainly focuses on meeting the long-term needs of refugees rather than short term needs.

By long term needs, there are three main components that this app would address: the three 3Es: Equality, Education and Employment.

First segment, Equality means educating the refugee or the app user about the rights of refugees. Awareness and complete understanding of their rights is vital as this will help refugees tackle difficult situations better.

Second is Education. In this segment, Education would include three main topics: culture, language and job-skills. These are online content that can be downloaded by the user for free and gain maximum benefit from available information.

Third component is Employment. This segment of the app will have all the vacancy postings from companies providing opportunities to skilled refugees.

While one might question whether refugees can afford to use mobiles, the answer is yes. With increased mobile network coverage and the need to stay connected with fellow and friends, mobile phones is being used by many refugees. Thus, the concept of having an end-to-end solution developed to meet the long-term needs of a refugee is a boon.

Implementation Plan:

Every business idea can only be a reality with smart execution. Therefore, for this app to be well-executed, there are three main factors identified:

Partner NGO or organization working in combating refugee issues: our target: collaboration with UNHCR. The responsibility of this organization would be to provide us, the developers access to information and create a platform for us to work or interview the refugees directly as well.

Skilled app developers: With skilled app developers, who share similar passion and share belief in the idea will be recruited. The responsibility of the developers would be to sincerely be committed in the project to meet the milestones set.

III.Marketing & Sales

Product description:

EqualityEducation Employment

How is FreshStart app different? It combines the crucial three Es together: Equality, Education and Employment information together. Equality: vital information about their rights that every refugee should know; Education: video, audio or text materials that will help them understand the new nation better and help enhance their job skills and finally Employment: information about job postings for those educated and skilled labor among the refugees. The main focus of the app is to provide them with a long term benefit solution.

With these three Es put together, this could be an end-to-end solution for refugees to make their resettlement less tiresome.

Target Market:Start with Nepal market: 36,000 refugees living in Nepal

Prospect for Growth: Develop versions of the app for India and Srilanka: Total market combined= 230,000

IV.Social Purpose

This app focuses on youth empowerment. Currently more than 1.3 million are under the age of 18. This app would be an attempt to increase the youth to educate themselves.

In addition to providing educational materials, this app focuses on the second E: Employment. The sooner they find a way to settle themselves, the sooner they can lead a prosperous life. Moreover, this employment opportunity would not only benefit the refugee family but helps companies or business houses grow and eventually increase the GDP of a country. As a result, with a GDP increase, more countries will look at the influx of refugees more positively.

Equality, Education Employment is key to ensure a future without violence.

V.Growth

Growth will be measured by the number of users of the application. While current number of refugees in Nepal is 36,000 there is higher prospect of growth if this app is also provided to other regions.

As a growth strategy, starting with South Asian Regions, this app can be slowly customized and well marketed.

Prospect for Growth: Develop versions of the app for India and Srilanka: Total market combined= 230,000.

VI.Finance

Budget Sheet

Type / Cost / Rate (USD) / Qty / Type / Total Cost(in USD)
Personal Investment / Payroll(4 developers) / 500 / 12 / monthly / 6000
Personal Investment / 6000
Seed-funding Investment / Website Domain / 10 / 1 / One time / 10
Internet / 40 / 12 / monthly / 480
Electricity / 40 / 2 / monthly / 80
Office Space / 80 / 12 / monthly / 960
Stationery / 10 / 12 / monthly / 120
Advertisement on FB and Twitter / 10 / 12 / monthly / 120
Android App store Developer Account / 25 / 1 / one time / 25
IOS App Store Developer Account / 100 / 1 / yearly / 100
Company Registration Legal fees / 300 / 1 / onetime / 300
Premium Tutorial content Purchase / 150 / 1 / onetime / 150
Seed -funding investment / 2345
Total Costs / 8345

Financing through either seed-funding by approaching local Angle funds or use Crowd sourcing site to raise funds.

Break-even:
On the assumption that the development phase of the product would be 5 months, the

VII.Implementation Plan

Developing this start-up, I have fivemain milestones:

Find a partner organization:in2 months: Find a suitable local partner organization like UNHCR to gain expertise knowledge in this field.

Research and Designing of the App: in1 months: Discuss with the organization the requirements of the app.

App development:in3 months: Intensive data collection and transferring data in the application for targeted audiences to use. These 3 months will also be used in testing the app.

Release it in Public:After 5 months’ work, release the first version of this App in Nepal. The reason why this app with first focus Nepal is because I personally understand the market here better. I have a few networks and connections via which I am confident that this solution will find a local partner organization.

Find sponsors or generate revenue through ads: Once the app is public, the next step would be generate income from ads through these apps so that the company can be self-sufficient and can focus better on growing rather than looking for funding.

*Costs and personnel requirements are mentioned above.

VIII.My Biography

Name: Alisha Tuladhar

DOB: 1993/05/31

Nationality: Nepalese

Languages: Nepali, English, Newari, Hindi, Japanese

Education background and experience:

Currently employed in Unlimited Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Nepal.

Bachelor in Business Administration from Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Japan, September 2015

Cambridge GSE A Levels from RatoBangala School, Kathmandu Nepal, 2011

Education background and link to idea:

While pursuing my degree in Japan, myuniversity had two major colleges: Asia Pacific Management and Asia Pacific Studies. This gave me a chance to explore both business related topics and social science related topics like poverty, urbanization etc.

At my university, I was very proactive as I enjoyed organizing events, being involved in clubs and projects, specially something for a good cause. This is around the time when I started taking up much interest in social entrepreneurship. One of self-initiated projects were “Teach As a Volunteer in Nepal” when I brought in 21 students from the university for a 2 week long Winter Camp session at a rural school in Western Nepal.

Being from one of the least developed countries, I have personally seen the struggles that most go through. I truly believe in giving back and doing anything possible for the welfare of the community.

Thus, when I came across this competition, I thought it was a great platform for me to participate and create my career from. This is an idea I came up with inspired by my personal struggles. When I studied aboard in Japan, the struggles made me realize the similar hardships that refugees face in a foreign land. While I was blessed with my family’s support, I can only imagine how hard the lives of refugees would be without any financial support and they are obliged to flee.

I am motivated and excited about making a difference. I truly believe that connectivity and information can do wonders and my app FreshStart attempts to be that source of wonder for refugees.