From his early days navigating complex corporate finance to taking the helm of Nepal’s pioneer digital wallet and scaling annual sales from NPR 7 Arab to NPR 26 Arab, this is the unvarnished story of Jagdish Khadka.
Over his transformative 4-year tenure as CEO of eSewa, Jagdish led a monumental 500% growth trajectory, scaling the platform to process over 55 Lakh (5.5 Million) daily transactions while engineering Nepal’s first distributed Cassandra database architecture capable of handling national-scale transaction concurrency.
In this podcast with Anup Ghimire, Jagdish pulls back the curtain on what it truly takes to run the financial backbone of Nepal: forcing software engineers onto crying customer support calls, viewing public criticism as "Subha Chintak", launching Nepal’s first collateral-free digital loan for visually impaired entrepreneurs, the human psychology behind the 100-Rupee tempo metaphor, and why AI automation will soon make mobile payment apps completely invisible.
Timestamps
00:00 - Highlights
03:28 - The Infrastructure Hook: Why Fintech Is Not Just an App
04:16 - The 4-Year CEO Tenure: Is 4 Years Too Short for a CEO?
06:51 - From 7 Arab to 26 Arab: The Playbook Behind 500% Growth
07:53 - Processing 55 Lakh Daily Transactions: Migrating MySQL to Cassandra
10:50 - Systems Run the Organization: The "Sabai Sadhai Sangai" Culture
14:14 - Handling Negative Media & Criticism: Why Critics Are "Subha Chintak"
16:28 - AI vs. Emotional Intelligence: Why EQ Beats AI in Leadership
24:28 - The 100-Rupee Tempo Metaphor: The Deep Human Anxiety Behind Money
29:35 - US Tap-to-Pay vs. Nepal Paper QR: Why Free QRs Beat Card POS Machines
39:47 - The Biggest CEO Regret: AI Automation & The "Invisible Wallet" Future
40:34 - Sabailai Man Karja (Sabalaman): Nepal's 1st Digital Loan for Visually Impaired
48:23 - One Day at the Call Center: Forcing Engineers & Execs onto Customer Calls
50:19 - Spending vs. Earning Mindset: High-Impact Marketing Strategy
50:51 - The Golden Leadership Rule

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🎤 Host: Anup Ghimire
Founder of The Doers
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🎙️ Guest: Jagdish Khadka
Former CEO of Esewa
Linkedin: LinkedIn: jagdish-khadka-58b96255

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