About GEN Bhutan

The Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) has been present in Bhutan since the early years of its flagship awareness campaign, working through The Loden Foundation — the Thimphu-based civil society organization founded in 1999 to promote education, social entrepreneurship, and Bhutanese culture. Loden took on the role of national host for Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) and has held it ever since, making it one of the longest continuously serving national hosts in South Asia. GEN records show a national campaign in place by 2012, when the Bhutanese campaign brought together ten partner organizations around 29 activities.  

From the outset, the campaign drew unusually senior support for a country of Bhutan's size. The 2012 campaign was backed by members of the royal family — Princess Deki Yangzom Wangchuck and Princess Pema Choden Wangchuck — alongside four members of government: Khandu Wangchuk, Minister of Economic Affairs; Dorji Wangdi, Minister of Labor and Human Resource; Aum Sangay Zam, Minister of Education; and Kinley Dorji, Minister of Information and Communications. That pattern of high-level engagement continued as the campaign matured, with Prime Minister Lyonchen Tshering Tobgay and Lyonpo Nima Sangay Tshempo, Minister of Labour and Human Resources, lending their support in subsequent years. 

The scale of the campaign has reflected Bhutan's size and its deliberate, community-scale approach to enterprise. The 2013 campaign counted nine partners running 25 activities for some 820 participants; by 2015, ten partners were delivering 35 activities. Loden has built its GEW work into a wider year-round program of training, start-up funding, mentoring, and entrepreneur awards, and in 2018 launched Druk Tshongrig Gatoen — the Bhutan Entrepreneurial Festival — as a complementary national gathering. GEW has also become a fixture inside government: in November 2023, the Department of Employment and Entrepreneurship under the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Employment marked the campaign at the Startup Centre in Thimphu, where founders shared their journeys and used a networking session with departmental leadership to raise the practical obstacles they face. 

Bhutan has been a consistently active member of GEN's Startup Nations community, with the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Employment listed among its members. The Hon. Karma Dorji, Minister of Industry, Commerce and Employment, represented Bhutan at the Startup Nations Ministerial convened at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC) in Melbourne in September 2023 — the annual closed-door session where ministers with responsibility for entrepreneurship policy compare regulatory approaches with their peers. Bhutanese ministers also spoke at the Digital Government Summit held during the same Congress, appearing alongside counterparts from Iraq and El Salvador to discuss how digitizing government procedures changes the experience of starting a business.  

Bhutan's most visible contribution to GEN's global policy work has come through Global Enterprise Registration (GER), the joint initiative of GEN and United Nations Trade and Development (UNCTAD) that helps governments simplify and automate the administrative steps entrepreneurs face. Bhutan's eRegulations information portal earned a GER award in 2016, presented during the opening of the World Investment Forum in Nairobi, and the country went on to become a reference case for the program. When Bhutan launched its single-window business registration portal in May 2021, it became the fastest place in the world to start a business: entrepreneurs can submit their details from a mobile phone and receive their business documents by email in under a minute, where previously they had to travel to one of six government offices and wait five days — a journey that could mean several days' walk for those in remote valleys. Bhutan's Minister of Economic Affairs described the approach as innovating first and regulating later, in order to lower entry barriers and let creativity flourish. 

Bhutanese founders have also reached GEN's global startup platforms. In 2021, The Green Road — Bhutan's first plastic recycling venture, which mixes waste plastic into bitumen to surface the country's roads — reached the EWC Top 100, having won a joint Nepal–Bhutan national final organized by the Nepalese Young Entrepreneurs' Forum. Its founder and managing proprietor, Rikesh Gurung, went on to join the GEN Starters Club, GEN's invitation-only community of founders sourced from its programs, which offers access to training, capital connections, and a global network of mentors. Gurung also serves as President of the Bhutan Association of Entrepreneurs, connecting his GEN engagement back into the domestic ecosystem. 

GEN maintains relationships with various Bhutanese ecosystem stakeholders, including The Loden Foundation, the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Employment and its Department of Employment and Entrepreneurship, the Startup Centre in Thimphu, and the Bhutan Association of Entrepreneurs. Through these partners, GEN's ongoing mission in Bhutan is to connect a small but determined ecosystem to leading-edge research, proven programs, and communities of experienced practitioners — and to ensure that a country already recognized worldwide for the speed and simplicity of its business registration is equally well known for the founders it produces.