Bloom Nepal School, an investee company, of One to Watch is revol

As you can read in our Impact Booklet, One to Watch has helped to create over 300 jobs, supported the segregation of 6.500 tons of waste and contributed to selling 8.000 irrigation kits in 2017. As we plan to launch our 20 million fund our impact is expected to grow exponentially in 2018.

Impact data driven

As creating impact is the raison d’être of One to Watch, measuring the impact of our portfolio companies is fundamental to our work. In fact, measuring impact data and integrating these data into our investment and decision-making procedures distinguishes us from regular investment management companies. We are proud that we have build a full-fledged impact investment management company in Nepal over the last few years. Qualified local investment team? Check. Solid pipeline of Nepalese companies? Check. Impact data integrated in all decision-making processes? Check.

Towards 20 Million Euros

By the end of 2017 we manage a portfolio of 4 million Euro spread over 15 SMEs in Nepal. Our fundamentals are strong, confirmed former World Bank Chief Investment Officer Peter Tropper. So now what? It is time to seriously scale our fund and our impact. We will launch a 20 million euro fund in the upcoming months and aim to close it in December 2019. Mr. Tropper already committed to invest in the new fund. 

Exciting new step

In 2018 we will also broaden our network of investors internationally, most notably by taking the current 10 Rockstart Impact companies to England for an extra Demo Day in London. The UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), one of the supporters of Rockstart Impact, will be able to show English taxpayers how public money is spent and make English investors aware of the investment opportunities in Nepal. This exciting step fits perfectly in the aim of One to Watch to become a role model for the impact investment industry.

utionizing the education sector in Nepal. As the pioneer of interest-based learning in Nepal, Bloom Nepal was awarded the Zayed Sustainability Award on January 15, 2020. An award of $100,000 was handed over in UAE for its initiative to drive energy self-sufficiency in its school. This project entails the setting up of biogas units to transform nearly a ton of organic waste into biogas and organic manure. Bloom Nepal was among one of six recipients of this prestigious award falling in the category of global high schools focusing on sustainable energy projects.

The award will prove to be a game-changer in the school’s biogas energy program. In the long run, the school intends to proceed with its energy program through partnerships with local government bodies.

Here, the school students will play a pivotal part as the leading stakeholders. The focus will be on the three R’s of Sustainability: reduce municipal waste, reuse organic waste by converting the waste into biogas and recycle garbage. The school aims to utilize the generated biogas for cooking in the school’s canteen and use the manure for farming.

With a strong belzief in Benjamin Franklin’s, ‘An investment in knowledge pays the best interest’ the founder of this school, Ram Krishna Rijal established this school to build capacities of rural children to make them globally competitive. Rijal who hails from a rural community, had the opportunity to graduate from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA in 2012. Prior to making his entrepreneurial debut, he worked with the World Bank and Thomas Herzfeld Asset Management and IFMR India.

Rijal found support in Chandan Mishra, a New York University (Abu Dhabi Campus) engineering undergraduate. Chandan was instrumental in designing the school using lightweight earthquake resistant materials. This comes in the wake of the disastrous earthquake of 2015 which grazed its first school building to the ground.

One to Watch’s post-earthquake intervention helped the school to expand its footprint through acquisition of another school in Itahari. The school started with 18 students in 2013 and by 2019, it had enrolled up to 450 students. Bloom Nepal’s goal is to build the largest network of schools in Nepal focusing on interest-based learning.