Growth
2026-10-30 · 8 min read
Sapun Lamichhane
Founder & CEO of Arcetis
Internet and smartphone penetration in Nepal has continued its steady rise over the past several years, with industry estimates consistently showing the majority of internet access happening via mobile data rather than fixed broadband or desktop connections, particularly outside the Kathmandu Valley and major cities like Pokhara. This matters directly for businesses: if the majority of your actual visitors are arriving on a phone, often on a mobile data connection rather than fast wifi, then a website or ad campaign designed and tested primarily on desktop is being judged against a reality it was never built for.
Connectivity quality still varies meaningfully by region - urban centers generally have fast, reliable 4G and growing 5G availability, while rural areas can still see slower, less consistent connections. A business with a national customer base should design with the slower end of that range in mind, not just the best-case urban experience.
This also affects how content should be written and designed, not just how a site should load - shorter paragraphs, larger tap targets, and clear visual hierarchy all matter more on a small screen than they do on a desktop monitor, where more forgiving layouts can still read clearly.
“Nepal's internet users browse first and almost everything on a phone now - a desktop-first marketing plan in 2026 is already out of date.”
Digital wallets like eSewa and Khalti have seen sustained growth in adoption for both bill payments and e-commerce transactions, alongside continued growth in card payments through Nepali banks. That said, cash on delivery remains a significant preference for a meaningful share of online shoppers, particularly for first-time purchases from a business they have not bought from before - trust in a new online seller still takes time to build, and payment behavior reflects that caution.
Social commerce - selling directly through Facebook and Instagram shops, pages, and direct messages, rather than a dedicated e-commerce website - remains a significant and sometimes underestimated share of online buying in Nepal, especially for smaller sellers who have not yet invested in a standalone website.
Buy-now-pay-later and installment options have also started appearing through some digital wallets and bank partnerships, though adoption remains early-stage compared to larger regional markets - a trend worth watching rather than planning around heavily just yet.
Google remains the dominant starting point for most searches in Nepal, but 2026 has seen a genuine, growing shift toward people also asking AI assistants and chatbots directly for recommendations and answers - "best web development company in Pokhara" is now a question people ask an AI assistant, not just a Google search box, and the assistant's answer can determine whether a business is even considered, with no click or visit involved at all.
This does not replace traditional search any time soon, but it adds a new layer: being well-optimized for traditional Google search no longer guarantees visibility in the growing number of conversations happening through AI assistants, which look at different signals - how clearly information is structured, how consistently a business is described across the web, and whether credible sources mention it at all.
Voice-based search and spoken queries through AI assistants on phones add a further wrinkle, since spoken questions tend to be phrased more conversationally than typed searches - asking where to get good momo delivery nearby, rather than typing a short keyword phrase - which rewards content written in a natural, question-and-answer style.
Mobile-first is no longer optional - it is the default experience for most visitors, and any website, ad, or content that has not been genuinely tested on a mid-range phone over mobile data is being judged on an incomplete picture. Digital trust signals - visible payment options, reviews, clear contact information - matter more as more transactions move online but buyer caution persists.
A presence across search, social, and increasingly AI-driven answers is becoming the realistic baseline rather than a nice-to-have, though that does not mean every business needs to be active everywhere equally - it means knowing which of these actually matters for your specific customers and investing there deliberately.
None of these shifts individually demand an overnight overhaul - most businesses can address them incrementally, starting with the one most likely to affect their specific customers, rather than treating this as a reason for a complete relaunch of their entire digital presence.
The businesses that adapt fastest to each of these shifts - mobile experience, digital payment trust, and now AI-driven search - tend to be the ones that treat their digital presence as something to continuously monitor and adjust, rather than a project finished once and left alone.
Arcetis has operated as Nepal's first dedicated AEO/GEO, or AI answer engine optimization, practice since 2019, alongside standard SEO and performance marketing, specifically because we have watched this shift from optimizing for Google to optimizing for how people are actually finding answers now play out in real client data over several years.
Keeping a simple quarterly habit of checking your own site on a phone, reading your last ten reviews, and asking an AI assistant what it says about your business and competitors is a low-effort way to stay ahead of most of these shifts without needing a formal audit every time.
Yes, for most SMBs it remains the single highest-reach platform in Nepal across age groups, particularly for local, community-driven audiences. It should not be treated as the only platform, but dismissing it in favor of newer platforms alone is usually a mistake for businesses targeting a broad Nepali audience.
It has grown meaningfully, driven by increasing digital wallet adoption through eSewa and Khalti and growing comfort with online buying generally, though cash on delivery and social commerce - selling through Facebook and Instagram directly - still make up a substantial share of actual transactions rather than dedicated e-commerce websites alone.
It is worth starting to pay attention to, particularly having accurate, consistent business information across your website, Google Business Profile, and other platforms, since that is exactly the kind of information AI assistants pull from. It is not yet as large a traffic source as traditional Google search, but the trend is clearly growing, and the groundwork of clear, well-structured content overlaps significantly with good SEO anyway.
Social media usage: Facebook still leads, but the picture is more fragmented
Facebook remains the most broadly used social platform across age groups in Nepal, and for most SMBs it is still the single highest-reach platform for local audiences. Instagram has a meaningfully large and growing presence among younger, more urban users, particularly for visual and lifestyle-oriented businesses. Short-form video platforms have also grown in reach, though usage and regulatory status for some of these platforms has shifted in Nepal before and should not be treated as fixed.
YouTube continues to be a significant platform for longer-form video content and product research, and is often underused by Nepal SMBs relative to its actual reach. The overall picture for 2026 is more fragmented than a few years ago - no single platform reaches everyone, which is exactly why a clear platform strategy matters more than trying to be everywhere at once.
Messaging apps also play a quieter but significant role in the overall picture - WhatsApp and Viber remain heavily used for direct customer communication and even order-taking in Nepal, often working alongside a social media page rather than a website, particularly for smaller and newer businesses.