I was born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, where every dime mattered. Especially with two siblings and a mom who stayed home to care for us. My dad was posed with a challenge to make ends meet only with his salary from hourly wages; little did I know that was where my financial journey would begin. I was barely ten when I was first tasked to help my dad manage his weekly schedule and our family’s finances. It was up to me to ensure his timetable was intact and his paycheck (normal and overtime) matched his hours worked. So I did that diligently, making sure our family got every nickel my dad worked for.
After years of handling my family’s budget and finances, I realized that this was something that could take me further and I was right. The year I graduated from high school, I was presented with an opportunity to pursue further education in the USA. My whole family was over-the-moon! And why wouldn’t they be? I was going to be the first Dahal in the family to graduate from university and finally that dream came true in 2011 when I graduated with a Bachelors of Accounting from BYU (Brigham Young University) in Provo, Utah.
Seeing my parents that day, was probably one of my life’s greatest moments. To make them proud, to change the narrative of generations, to be able to show my folks around the corners of my school – the same ones that inspired me to dream a little bigger.
I spent he next 5 years as an accountant/auditor in PriceWaterHouseCoopers, LLP, San Francisco CA office. I remember few things I did at PwC today after a decade but I met some of the best and smartest people that I called them my lifelong friends and mentors. I’ve met friends who have seen me through the best and the worst. And though my job at PwC was important, I still felt as though I was meant to be an entreprenuer so I left corporate America to seek American Dream.
So right after my 5th year, I left PwC to start my consulting practice to help SMEs with finance & taxes. This opened up doors for me to meet so many aspiring entrepreneurs in tech, hospitality, payments, legal and so on, and eventually, in 2017 I started getting my hands dirty by operating brick and mortar operation for US to Nepal remittance business when I was asked by hundreds of Nepalese diaspora in Bay Area. I quickly realize how hard it is to pull through in this regulated business. Fast Forward in late 2018, I started getting my hands dirty building Machnet along with my co-founders as Co-Founder/CFO. Though I’ve come a long way from logging my dad’s hours to founding companies, I will never forget all that it’s taught me. And now that I’m in a position to create a difference, it’s my turn to pave the way forward.
While building Machnet and even before, I’ve seen how vital remittance is for families who depend on them. Remittance is life line for many families back home in Nepal and many other countries. As I am taking this website life, >22% of the GDP is sustained by Remittance in Nepal and as it sound nuts but it’s true. And I guess that drew me closer to Machnet – knowing I was, at some level, creating an impact for people in countries like Nepal. And while I’m building this Fintech start-up with my co-founders, I find myself constantly challenging everything I know to be true to create something bigger and better than me. Enabling companies to build remittance and payment products has been the mission of Machnet, and this has been a game changer for founders, innovators, and entrepreneurs around the world I can’t be more excited then to continue this path to democratize the cross-border payment space to give every opportunity for the founder to build hyper-localized payment solution for their end users.
