About
Why ailiteracynepal exists.
A plainly-written course on artificial intelligence — written for Nepal, from Melbourne. The story of why this project exists, and the person behind it.
The idea
Why now, why here.
AI is moving fast. By the time you finish reading this paragraph, somewhere in the world a model has been deployed, an old job has shifted, and a new one has appeared. Most of this is happening in English, in California, and in companies that have never set foot in Patan or Pokhara.
What's available to a curious Nepali learner today is roughly this: free English-language courses that assume you already know what an algorithm is; expensive American certificates that assume you can pay $300; or YouTube videos of variable quality. Almost nothing assumes you're sitting in Kathmandu with a Khalti app open and a real question about how it actually works.
ailiteracynepal exists to fill that gap. Not by recreating MIT's curriculum in Nepali, but by writing a course that treats Nepali life as the default — Khalti as the worked example, Devanagari OCR as the case study, the patterns of paddy yields and monsoon as the data we discuss. Plain language, no math, no programming, no fees.
The longer hope is simple: a thousand Nepalis who can read AI papers, spot biased models, and build systems for their own country will do more for Nepal than another foreign-built app dropped into the local market. This project is not training engineers. It is training citizens. The first step is to make the whole field legible.
The author
Who I am, and why I'm doing this.
Nischal Niroula
Software & AI Engineer · Product Designer · Founder, Nowa Tech
Namaste. I'm Nischal Niroula — a 27-year-old AI Engineer from the breathtaking landscapes of Nepal, now based in Melbourne, Australia. Tech is my ikigai. Most days you'll find me building AI systems that are intelligent, scalable, and — the part most people skip — actually useful to the humans on the other end.
My day job is engineering AI products. My background is in UI/UX and product design, which I think shows in how I write — clearly, with the reader in mind, and without the jargon that usually fences this field off. I run Nowa Tech as a small studio on the side. And I believe, deeply, that anyone can learn this stuff. What sets one person apart from another isn't talent — it's whether the field was made legible to them, in their language, on their terms.
ailiteracynepal is the course I wished existed when I first started learning AI: the resources didn't exist in Nepali, didn't draw from systems I actually used, and assumed I already knew what I was trying to learn. Being a Nepali in Melbourne gives me a particular vantage point — close enough to AI to see how it's being built, far enough away to notice how rarely Nepal is the audience. This site is my small attempt to change that.
Off the screen I run long distances (badly), play FIFA, volunteer where I can, take photographs when something stops me, and write when inspiration shows up. I'm a passionate advocate for mental health — open conversation, self-awareness, and the kind of patience with yourself that takes real work. And I genuinely believe tech can change the world for the better. If you find a mistake, want to argue with a chapter, or just have a question — please write. The email above comes straight to me, not a queue.