Sagun Bhattarai is the founder and a chief Luthier at Sahana Guitars. He completed his intermediate level (plus two educations) in science and attained the rest of his education Chartered Accountant( ACCA) from the UK. As he had always been ardent about manufactory, he decided to return back to Nepal. After his arrival back home, he professionally engaged in the finance and banking sector. Eventually he grew disappointed with his customary corporate job and decided to quit it. He had two distinct ideas regarding his future venture and/or investment. The former idea was to dive into the solar panel business which he very soon deemed to be less impactful and resounding to him. He realized that solar panels are linked directly to the government and policy makers, distributors as a prerequisite for development so it wouldn’t stand out as a firm contribution. He then dropped the idea. His latter idea lied in the guitar industry which he also happened to be very passionate about. He understood how much detail and precision mattered in terms of guitars so when he came to a finding that good quality of guitars was not available in the local market and since Nepal is rich in high quality woods as raw materials. He started to bring parts and developed his own machines for wood working from 2012. Mr. Bhattarai also studied about woods and learned that the woods available in Nepal are indeed of very good quality. Hence, high quality woods that were not valued traditionally were used as a raw material for manufacturing guitars. This knowledge was a landmark achievement. Later, with the help of internet and Luthier Books, a total of twenty two guitars were made in the first batch which included Les Paul and PRS inspired guitars.

Apurwa Rayamajhi then joined the founder. Academically, he was from travel and tourism trades’ background. Mr. Rayamajhi interned as well as worked his first job on an airlines company. He had worked with Yeti Airlines, Qatar Airways and also had his own tour company with few other people. Rayamajhi had good idea about what Mr. Sagun was taking on at. These two men were pals and Rayamajhi was also a guitarist. As a passionate musician he immediately recognized the impeccable quality of the guitars and hence, he was soon a part of the team. This is how the Sahana Guitars journey started. For each batch, Sagun was the manufacturer whereas Apurwa studied the market, looked for feedbacks and made sure the quality was top notch. Everyday struggling musicians needed a guitar that is dependable. Sahana Guitars then studied about what kind of guitars that served the purposes of the struggling artists and came out with their first original craft “Nyauli”. It was the most economical, versatile instrument for the targeted musicians. It was a huge success. The team then started to take notes on how PRS and LP style guitars could be made even better and what aspects of their work needed improvisations and how it could be done. They gradually started to research on FB, started taking feedbacks and opinions from people. They then came up with two new original designs “Lampucchre” and “Danphe”. Both members of the duo decided that as they were both working for the marketing, sales and manufactures, they needed people for selling their product. For the new mission of expanding their horizons, they approached people from the music field regarding distribution but everyone wanted a whooping 30-35% commission in credit for the sale of the guitars. This brought a big shock to the team to learn how music stores wanted such huge margin of profit. They had an option to bring up the prices of the guitars, which wouldn’t be a fair and moral thing to do but knowing someone else would make such big profit off of their hard works wasn’t an acceptable option either. So instead of approaching music stores and giving commissions, they agreed on opening their own store and selling their products in order to provide a fair deal to the struggling musicians. For the expansion of the project, it was realized that just the two of them weren’t enough so they decided that they needed two more versatile individuals as an addition to the team. Very fortunately, Shirshak Subedi and Apurva Chaudhary became part of the Sahana Guitars team. The four wheels of the carriage, the four horsemen of the team, started their journey together.

With the social media platform that we have today, Sahana Guitars has established itself as a very qualitative and renowned Guitar manufacturer and provider in the country. The biggest goal of Sahana Guitars as of today is to expand their horizons to the international scene, competing with the best brands and catering to a wider range of customers.