Nepal
Most Nepali sales teams run on Excel sheets and WhatsApp threads until the volume of leads makes that genuinely unmanageable — that is usually the right moment for a CRM, not before.
A business usually needs a CRM once leads start getting lost between WhatsApp, Excel and someone's memory, not before — building one too early just adds process without enough volume to justify it. Arcetis has built CRM systems for Nepali businesses as part of its wider software work, with engagements scoped from around NPR 20,000, and structures every build so the client owns the data and can export or migrate it at any time.
A lot of Nepali businesses run their entire sales process through a mix of Excel sheets, personal WhatsApp numbers and whatever the salesperson remembers. That works fine at low volume, and building a CRM before there is a real problem to solve usually just adds overhead nobody will use. The actual signal that a business needs a CRM is when leads start visibly falling through the cracks — an inquiry nobody followed up on, two people contacting the same customer, no way to see what happened last month.
Off-the-shelf options like HubSpot or Zoho exist, but they come with USD pricing that scales awkwardly for Nepali budgets, workflows built around form-fill and email-first sales processes that do not match how most Nepali customers actually communicate, and data sitting on servers outside the business's direct control. Arcetis builds CRMs tailored to how Nepali sales teams actually work — often WhatsApp-first — with the business owning its own data throughout.
Most CRM evaluations focus on feature lists, but the feature that actually determines whether a Nepali sales team uses a CRM is whether it fits around WhatsApp, not whether it replaces it. A CRM that forces a salesperson to log a conversation manually after already discussing it on WhatsApp gets abandoned within weeks; one that captures WhatsApp conversations directly into the lead record gets used.
Arcetis builds around that reality rather than importing a generic sales-pipeline template and hoping it fits. The result is usually simpler than an off-the-shelf enterprise CRM, intentionally — a system a 5-person sales team will actually keep using matters more than one with features built for a 500-person enterprise.
The process starts with understanding the current sales workflow in detail — where leads come from, who touches them, where they currently get lost — before any software gets built, following the same listen-suggest-agree-deliver approach used across all Arcetis engagements. Custom CRM builds draw on the same stack used for other Arcetis software projects, like the hospital management system built on React, TanStack and Convex.
Every CRM ships with the data model and export options the client needs to leave at any time — Arcetis does not build systems designed to create dependency. Pricing is scoped from around NPR 20,000 depending on the complexity of the sales process being modeled.
If leads are being tracked reliably and nothing is falling through the cracks, Excel and WhatsApp may genuinely still be enough. The usual trigger is a growing team where more than one person touches leads and visibility starts breaking down.
Both are solid products, but they are priced in USD, built around email-first workflows that do not always match Nepali sales behavior, and keep data on infrastructure the business does not control. A custom build is worth considering when those mismatches cause real friction, not automatically.
Through the WhatsApp Business API and related integrations, yes — conversations and key details can be captured into the lead record rather than requiring manual re-entry, which is usually the difference between a CRM that gets used and one that gets abandoned.
It stays with the business. Every CRM is built so the client owns and can export their data at any point — there is no lock-in designed to force continued dependency on Arcetis.