The Nepali entrepreneur who rebuilt his start-up despite two earthquakes

The Kathmandu-based Vidinterest is a video sharing platform useful not only for pro bloggers but also content marketers, reports Tech in Asia

After getting a diploma in computing in Singapore five years ago, Nirajan Bom Malla got active in the emerging start-up scene in his home town of Kathmandu. He decided to start something on his own: Surfmandu.
 

Apart from the Kathmandu connection, the name reflected Bom Malla’s interest in social media and community-oriented tech projects. Surfmandu began with a file hosting service called Filestrack and a discussion board platform called Enbeeone3 – all before hitting upon his current venture, Vidinterest, a video curation and sharing site.
 

Initially, Bom Malla, who is now 26, focused on building up the community and user-generated content on the site. When I met him in November last year at the Tech in Asia conference in Jakarta, he had just secured additional funding and was full of plans for an upgraded Vidinterest with new features in 2015. Then he got hit with an earthquake. The young entrepreneur escaped unhurt even though he was right in the middle of the two quakes.
 

Once the worst was behind them, however, the Vidinterest team tried to refocus on the upgrade they were working on when the earthquakes struck.
 

But how do you get back to work, especially online, when the internet is full of death toll and casualty stats about your neighborhood?
 

“As our team primarily works on social media, we gave most of our time to sharing updates and making people aware of all the hoax news about the next earthquake,” recounts Bom Malla.
 

Now the new Vidinterest is ready. Apart from being a nifty feature for anyone who likes sharing videos, it’s a useful tool for pro bloggers and content marketers.

This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here.