Bikram Shrestha serves as the President of the Nepal Internet Foundation, an organization that sits at the heart of Nepal’s effort to build a more connected, more inclusive, and more digitally empowered nation. His leadership of NIF is the natural culmination of a career spent at the intersection of internet development, digital policy, and community empowerment. Everything he has done across 25 years in Nepal’s internet and financial sectors has pointed toward the same fundamental question: how do we ensure that the internet works for everyone in Nepal, not just for those who are already well connected?
The Nepal Internet Foundation was established to answer that question through sustained, systematic, and collaborative action. Under Bikram’s presidency, the foundation has grown into a respected voice in Nepal’s digital ecosystem, working across research, policy, infrastructure, and community engagement to address the real and persistent challenges that stand between the Nepali people and the full benefits of internet connectivity.
What the Nepal Internet Foundation Is
The Nepal Internet Foundation is a research and development forum dedicated to supporting and conducting technical and geographical research in the context of Nepal, with the specific goal of building up the country’s internet infrastructure and expanding access to communities and regions that remain underserved.
NIF’s core mission is to contribute to Nepal’s digital transformation by tackling the structural, regulatory, and social challenges that hold back broader internet adoption. The foundation works at multiple levels simultaneously, from influencing national policy and cyber law to supporting grassroots digital literacy and community-level connectivity initiatives.
At the heart of NIF’s work is a set of values that Bikram himself has embodied throughout his career. The foundation prioritizes the development and implementation of better internet policies and cyber laws. It advocates for a regulatory environment that enables the internet to be used freely, safely, and accessibly by every Nepali citizen. And it insists that internet governance must be grounded in the lived realities of the people it affects, not just in the perspectives of technical elites or large institutional actors.
NIF works closely with a wide range of partners including individuals, communities, government bodies, NGOs, INGOs, and the private sector. That breadth of engagement reflects Bikram’s long-held belief that the internet is a shared resource and that building it effectively requires the participation of all the stakeholders who depend on it.
The Challenge Nepal Faces
To understand why the work of the Nepal Internet Foundation matters, it is important to understand the scale of the challenge Nepal faces in achieving meaningful internet access for its population.
According to UNCTAD statistics and the DataReportal database for 2023, only 51.6 percent of Nepal’s population has access to the internet. Social media data for the same year shows that 38.57 percent of the population is active on social platforms, with a total of 12.60 million social media users across the country. These figures reflect genuine progress over the past two decades, but they also reveal how far Nepal still has to go before the internet can truly be said to serve the whole nation.
Nepal has a rich and important history of technological development. The country’s first telephone exchange was established in Kathmandu in 1913, and the first optical fiber connection between Nepal and India was laid in 1997, opening the door to the internet era. In the years since, Nepal has made significant strides in expanding connectivity, particularly in urban areas and along major transport corridors.
But progress has not been even, and the challenges that remain are both structural and systemic. Nepal’s internet connectivity is heavily dependent on its neighboring countries, creating a degree of vulnerability and cost pressure that limits what local ISPs can offer at affordable prices. Infrastructure development in a country with Nepal’s geography is inherently expensive, and the number of internet service providers operating in the country remains limited relative to the size and diversity of the population. High costs, limited competition, complex terrain, and regulatory gaps have all contributed to a situation where nearly half of Nepal’s population remains offline.
These are not simple problems. They require research, advocacy, policy reform, infrastructure investment, and sustained community engagement all working together over an extended period of time. That is precisely what the Nepal Internet Foundation was built to deliver.
What NIF Is Doing About It
Under Bikram’s leadership, the Nepal Internet Foundation is pursuing a comprehensive and multi-pronged strategy to address Nepal’s internet access and infrastructure challenges. The foundation does not approach this work as a single initiative or a short-term campaign. It approaches it as a long-term commitment to systemic change across multiple dimensions of Nepal’s digital ecosystem.
Creating a Business Case for Content Delivery Networks
One of the practical realities of internet access in Nepal is that a significant portion of the cost and latency that users experience is driven by the fact that the content they access online is physically hosted far from Nepal. Content Delivery Networks bring content closer to users by distributing it across geographically dispersed servers, reducing latency and improving the quality of the internet experience. NIF is working to build a compelling business case for CDN providers to establish local infrastructure in Nepal at their own cost, which would significantly improve internet performance for Nepali users without requiring large public expenditure.
Developing Local Content and E-Commerce
The absence of substantial local content is one of the factors that limits the perceived value of the internet for many Nepali people, particularly those in rural areas and those who are more comfortable in local languages than in English. NIF is working to support the growth of local language content and e-commerce ecosystems in Nepal. When the internet reflects Nepali lives, Nepali culture, and Nepali commerce, it becomes genuinely relevant and useful to a much wider population. This work aligns closely with Bikram’s long-standing advocacy for multilingual internet access and Internationalized Domain Names across his work at ICANN and APNIC.
Building a Stronger Regulatory Framework
Effective internet development requires a regulatory environment that encourages investment, protects users, promotes competition, and removes unnecessary barriers to access. NIF is actively engaged in working toward a more compelling and modern regulatory framework for Nepal’s internet sector, one that reflects international best practices while remaining grounded in Nepal’s specific context and needs. Bikram brings his deep experience in both internet governance and financial regulation to this work, ensuring that NIF’s policy contributions are both technically informed and practically grounded.
Exploring Regional Connectivity Options
Nepal’s geographic position and its dependence on neighboring countries for internet connectivity are challenges that require creative and sustained diplomatic and technical engagement. NIF is exploring the possibility of right-of-way agreements through third countries, which could open up additional upstream connectivity options for Nepal and reduce the country’s dependence on a limited number of routes. Diversifying Nepal’s international connectivity would improve resilience, increase competition, and ultimately reduce costs for Nepali internet users.
Attracting More Upstream Providers
Increasing the number of upstream internet providers connecting to Nepal at the border is one of the most direct ways to improve both the quality and the affordability of internet access across the country. Greater competition among upstream providers drives down costs and improves the options available to local ISPs and ultimately to end users. NIF is working to make Nepal a more attractive destination for upstream providers by supporting infrastructure development, regulatory improvements, and stakeholder engagement that demonstrates the commercial opportunity that Nepal’s growing internet market represents.
The Vision That Drives the Work
Everything the Nepal Internet Foundation does flows from a vision that Bikram has carried with him throughout his career and that now animates the foundation’s entire programme of work.
NIF envisions a society where people are empowered by the internet. Not merely connected to it, but genuinely empowered by it. A society where every individual regardless of where they live in Nepal, what language they speak, how old they are, or what their income level is has the ability to communicate and collaborate with others, access information and services, participate in the digital economy, and improve their own lives and the lives of their communities through the internet.
That vision is ambitious. In a country where nearly half the population is still offline, where infrastructure costs are high, where regulatory frameworks are still developing, and where the digital divide between urban and rural communities remains wide, it would be easy to treat that vision as aspirational rather than achievable. Bikram does not see it that way. He sees it as a destination that requires sustained, coordinated, and evidence-based work to reach, and he has built the Nepal Internet Foundation as the vehicle for that journey.
The foundation’s approach to closing the digital gap is grounded in a recognition that the barriers to internet access in Nepal are multiple and interconnected. Content, research, and technology all play a role. So do policy, infrastructure, and community awareness. NIF’s work addresses all of these dimensions, because Bikram understands from experience that addressing only one or two of them is not enough to produce the kind of systemic change that will genuinely move the needle on internet access for the millions of Nepali people who remain offline.
A Foundation Built on Collaboration
One of the defining characteristics of the Nepal Internet Foundation under Bikram’s leadership is the breadth and depth of its collaborative relationships. NIF does not work in isolation. It works in active partnership with individuals, communities, government agencies, NGOs, INGOs, and private sector organizations, bringing together the full range of stakeholders who have a role to play in building Nepal’s digital future.
This collaborative approach reflects something fundamental about how Bikram understands the challenge of internet development. No single organization, government body, or private company can build a truly connected Nepal on its own. The infrastructure challenge is too large, the policy landscape too complex, and the community too diverse for any single actor to address alone. What is needed is a shared effort, coordinated across sectors and sustained over time, with all stakeholders contributing their distinctive knowledge, resources, and relationships to a common goal.
NIF provides the forum, the research, and the convening power to make that kind of collaboration possible. It brings people together who might not otherwise be in the same room, facilitates conversations that cut across traditional sectoral boundaries, and translates research and evidence into policy recommendations that reflect the interests of the full range of stakeholders involved.
That convening and bridging function is, in many ways, the foundation’s most important contribution. Nepal has no shortage of talented technologists, committed policymakers, and passionate civil society advocates working on internet access issues. What NIF provides is the connective tissue that helps those individual efforts add up to something more than the sum of their parts.
Key Focus Areas
Research and Infrastructure Development
Supporting and conducting technical and geographical research to understand Nepal’s internet access landscape and identify the most effective pathways to infrastructure improvement across all regions of the country.
Policy and Cyber Law Advocacy
Working with government, civil society, and the private sector to develop and implement better internet policies and cyber laws that protect users, promote access, and create a stable and attractive environment for digital investment and innovation.
Content and E-Commerce Development
Supporting the growth of local language digital content and e-commerce ecosystems that make the internet genuinely relevant and useful for Nepali people across all regions and language communities.
Connectivity and Infrastructure Investment
Building the case for CDN investment, attracting upstream providers, and exploring new regional connectivity options to improve the quality, resilience, and affordability of internet access across Nepal.
Community Empowerment and Digital Literacy
Working with communities, NGOs, and local organizations to build the digital skills and awareness that enable people to make the most of internet access when they gain it, with particular attention to underserved and rural communities.
The Nepal Internet Foundation represents the fullest expression of Bikram Shrestha’s lifelong commitment to the internet as a force for human empowerment and social progress. From the young man who founded Hetauda’s first ISP in 1999 to the president of a national foundation working to connect the half of Nepal that remains offline today, his journey has always been pointed in the same direction: toward a Nepal where the internet belongs to everyone.
The work is complex. The challenges are real. The progress is sometimes slow. But under Bikram’s leadership, the Nepal Internet Foundation continues to build the evidence, the relationships, the policy frameworks, and the infrastructure that will eventually make that vision a reality.
A connected Nepal is not inevitable. It is something that has to be built, deliberately, collaboratively, and with a sustained commitment to leaving no community behind. That is what NIF is doing. And that is the work Bikram Shrestha has devoted his career to advancing.