Ang Phurba Sherpa, like thousands of youths in the country, went to Israel in search of better opportunities in 2006. After working as a supervisor on a farm for 8 years, he returned to Nepal with a strong ambition to establish his own business. With the knowledge and skills acquired while working on a farm abroad, he started Salaka Krishi Tatha Training Center in 2014. Although Salaka initially started from producing organic vegetables, they quickly expanded and ventured into milk, dairy, vermicompost and feed production.

The company has been operating out of a farm located in Sundarijal spread across 14 acres of land. Employing 27 people in the business, Salaka Krishi has the capacity of producing 20 tons of vegetables in a season. Currently, they have more than 150 cows in their farm and can produce more than 1300 litres of milk every day. Apart from milk production, Salaka also runs a dairy shop in Boudha, where they process the milk and sell a range of dairy products such as Paneer, Khuwa, Ghee, Cream, Butter, Rasbhari and Lalmohan. In 2016, Ang Phurba Sherpa was awarded with the “Rastrapati Utkrishta Kisan Puraskar” by the government for his outstanding performance in agriculture.

Salaka Krishi had plans to increase its production capacity when the business was abruptly halted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Although categorized under essential businesses by the government during the lockdown, Salaka Krishi faced a lot of challenges in operation with disruptions in the supply chain and increase in operational costs that significantly impacted the revenue of the business.

Salaka Krishi Tatha Training Center is one of the beneficiaries of the COVID-19 MSME Fund Nepal, supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation – SDC and FMO – Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank, managed by One to Watch (OTW). With the help of the fund, Salaka Krishi Tatha Training Center was able to receive an interest-free and collateral-free loan from NMB Bank, which was utilized mainly for increasing its production capacity and making improvements in its farm.

OTW also aims to provide tailored business development services to Salaka Krishi Tatha Training Center and intends to help the company in record keeping, acquiring necessary approvals for commercial production with support in  branding and marketing for its dairy products.