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Prabin Shrestha conceptualized an outdoor cafe under a magnificent mango tree, creating a warm and inviting space where people could gather, converse, and find inspiration. Named in honor of his mother, Mira, the café symbolizes the love and luck she has brought into his life. For him, La’ Mira is a sanctuary for those who value creativity, connection, and culture.

Born and raised in Hetauda, Shrestha grew up observing his father, who navigated business challenges with resilience and determination. He developed a keen interest in business from an early age. After completing his +2 in Science, he pursued a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA). His desire to excel in the business world led him to obtain a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in 2023. 

In 2025, he was elected the Vice President of Junior Chamber International (JCI) Hetauda, an opportunity that allowed him to enhance his leadership skills and contribute to the local community.

After completing his MBA, Shrestha planned to go abroad for a PhD in Marketing, believing it to be the next logical step in his academic and professional journey. “But when I returned to Hetauda, I realized that, despite the city growing rapidly, there was no place where I could enjoy good coffee in a welcoming atmosphere,” he says. So, he decided to take matters into his own hands.

With a piece of family-owned land adjacent to his house, he saw the perfect opportunity to bring his vision to life. Thus, La’ Mira was born.

Before founding La’ Mira, Shrestha had already embarked on multiple entrepreneurial ventures. He co-founded Addy Marketing, a digital marketing agency that assisted over 100 businesses in establishing a strong online presence. Additionally, he co-founded Kathmandu Gifts, an online gifting platform that successfully delivered over 1,000 gifts across Nepal. These experiences equipped him with essential skills in branding, business strategy, and consumer behavior. “But La’ Mira was different. It was personal,” he says. 

Establishing a café in Hetauda came with its own set of challenges. The coffee culture in the region was still developing, and most people were accustomed to dark roast coffee. Shrestha, however, preferred medium roast and had to introduce this concept gradually. Through customer engagement and a well-structured loyalty program, he helped people appreciate the nuances of different coffee flavors. “The key wasn’t forcing people to adopt coffee culture, but rather to introduce them to it in a way that felt natural,” he says. 

Another significant challenge was the lack of mentorship. Shrestha had to learn the intricacies of running a hospitality business from scratch. From sourcing quality ingredients to managing a team and ensuring operational efficiency, he navigated these hurdles through continuous learning and adaptability. Hiring and retaining skilled staff in Hetauda proved to be difficult, as many hospitality professionals sought opportunities in larger cities or abroad. Despite these obstacles, he remained committed to his vision, focusing on in-house training and implementing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to ensure consistency in service and quality.

La’ Mira stands out due to its emphasis on experience and community building. Shrestha says that they focused not just on serving great coffee but on curating a unique ambiance, a friendly environment, and an evolving menu. Alongside coffee, La’ Mira introduced innovative food items such as open momo, choila rice, and chicken chatpatey—local flavors with a modern twist. 

La’ Mira has also become a space where students come to study, professionals come to work, and friends gather to share ideas. Shrestha’s commitment to consistency and customer engagement has helped shape a new coffee culture in Hetauda—one where coffee is not just a beverage but a lifestyle choice.

“As Hetauda grows, with better schools, colleges, and hospitals, the population is expanding, and with it, the demand for a place to connect. We’ve become part of that change.

Looking ahead, Shrestha envisions La’ Mira growing beyond a single location. While expansion is a possibility, he believes in strategic and thoughtful growth rather than rapid scaling. He is considering opening another branch in a Tier-2 city where café culture is still evolving and where La’ Mira’s unique ambiance could thrive. However, his broader vision extends beyond coffee. He aims to establish La’ Mira as a lifestyle brand synonymous with quality experiences, good connections, and unforgettable moments.

To strengthen the brand, Shrestha will be launching La’ Mira Events, a venture dedicated to organizing large-scale community gatherings. Shrestha is exploring the idea of introducing specialty coffee at La’ Mira, refining the café’s offerings, and deepening connections with coffee connoisseurs. With Hetauda’s growing population, improving educational institutions, and rising number of young professionals, the demand for quality coffee and community spaces is set to increase. La’ Mira is well-positioned to be at the forefront of this evolution. “But for now, the focus remains on solidifying La’ Mira’s identity, but when the time is right, expansion will definitely be on the table,” he says.

For those looking to start their own ventures, Shrestha offers simple yet powerful advice: Stay practical, embrace failure, and understand your market. He emphasizes the importance of balancing passion with market research, as well as seeking mentorship to navigate industry-specific challenges. He believes that while setbacks are inevitable, they are also opportunities to learn and grow.

“Small businesses contribute to the local culture and identity, making each area unique. As an entrepreneur, you have the power to shape the local economy by supporting other small ventures and investing in your community. The ripple effect of supporting and growing small businesses is immense. In the long run, small businesses build a more resilient and diverse economic landscape,” he says.

Shrestha also highlights the role of small businesses in shaping local economies. By supporting and creating small businesses, entrepreneurs contribute to job creation, innovation, and community building. Through La’ Mira, he has demonstrated that a small idea, when nurtured with vision and dedication, can transform into something much larger—a symbol of connection, culture, and shared experiences.

Shrestha’s journey as an entrepreneur resembles the power of vision, resilience, and community-driven business. From digital marketing and e-commerce to hospitality and lifestyle branding, he has carved a unique path in Nepal’s entrepreneurial landscape. La’ Mira The Coffee Club is more than just a café—it is a movement redefining coffee culture in Hetauda. With a focus on authenticity, innovation, and meaningful connections, Shrestha continues to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs, proving that success is not just about business but about the experiences one creates along the way.

For over 2600 years, Gautam Buddha’s moral principles have emphasized non-violence and respect for all living beings, recognizing all flora and fauna as sentient and capable of suffering. This ethos of compassion still influences Nepal’s cultural and spiritual approach to wildlife. However, modernization, habitat encroachment, climate change and anthropogenic pressures have escalated human-wildlife conflicts (HWC). As landscapes shrink, peaceful coexistence demands blending traditional ecological wisdom with science-based strategies. Achieving this harmonious balance honors Buddhism philosophy while ensuring ecological sustainability.

History: Harmony to conflict

For millennia, human societies coexisted with wildlife in a delicate balance. According to Fabrice Teletchea’s book ‘Animal Domestication (2018)’, early modern humans (Homo sapiens) emerged approximately 200,000 years ago, depended on hunting wild animals and gathering plants for survival. This dynamic began to shift around 12,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture in regions (Fertile Crescent, China and Mesoamerica). The domestication of plants and animals, coupled with agricultural expansion, progressively confined wildlife to fragmented habitats. As agrarian societies displaced hunter-gatherer communities, human-wildlife interactions (HWI) evolved from coexistence to competition.

This transition further accelerated with industrialization and urbanization. A peer-reviewed study, published in Biological Reviews, estimates that since 1500, up to 13 percent of known species—approximately 150,000 to 260,000—may have already gone extinct. This alarming loss termed “biological annihilation” is directly linked to human activities. Historical records by the Smithsonian Institute highlight species like dodo (1690), Labrador duck (1870), Tasmanian tiger (1936), Hawaii chaff flower (1962) and Golden toad (1989), all driven to extinction by anthropogenic pressures.

HWCs in Nepal

Nepal’s HWC trajectory closely mirrors global patterns. The establishment of 12 national parks and several conservation areas including Chitwan and Bardiya National Parks initially provided wildlife with critical refuge. However, these protected areas also created conflict hotspots along their buffer zones, where human settlements and agricultural lands directly border wildlife habitats.

A 2016 PLOS One Journal study documented 463 conflict incidents resulting in human injury or death caused by large mammals between 2010 and 2014. Between 2000 and 2020, Nepal recorded 1139 cases of wildlife mortality and 887 human fatalities linked to HWCs. Notably, thousands of people and their properties in the Tarai regions were affected by elephant-related conflicts alone, underscoring the gravity of the issue.

HWC refers to harmful encounters where wildlife threatens human safety, livelihoods or cultural values, often triggering retaliatory actions. HWI is a neutral term covering positive, negative or benign forms of contact. Coexistence, however, is a balanced state where humans and wildlife share space with tolerable impacts, supported by adaptive management, cultural acceptance and mutual benefits.

Nepal offers an ideal case for better understanding these dynamics. Rapid, unplanned urbanization and intensified agriculture have escalated competition for habitat and resources. Protected areas, surrounded by settlements, have led to wildlife frequently venturing into croplands and communities, heightening conflict potential.

HWC, alongside zoonotic diseases, poses significant public health risks. With 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases being zoonotic and 70 percent originating from wildlife, addressing these challenges is crucial. Deforestation, habitat fragmentation and wildlife trade create “spillover hotspots,” enabling pathogens to circulate in the wildlife-livestock-humans interface.

Forest-edge communities face heightened risks from diseases like brucellosis, leptospirosis, leishmaniasis, rabies, tuberculosis and anthrax. Wildlife are equally vulnerable to ‘reverse spillover’ reported canine distemper virus and tuberculosis in Nepal’s wild species.

Covid-19 pandemic and other outbreaks (Mpox, Ebola) highlighted the global consequences of poorly managed HWI, underscoring the urgency of integrating public health into conservation strategies to mitigate such risks.

Climate change exacerbates these risks by altering species distributions, habitat and migration patterns. Shifting temperature and precipitation disrupt wildlife foraging and breeding, pushing into human-dominated landscapes for searching for food and water. Concurrent habitat degradation reduces natural food supplies, intensifying crop raiding and livestock predation. Nepal, a biodiversity hotspot, is vulnerable to these cascading effects. The keystone species loss and ecosystem disruptions jeopardize the ecology essential for wildlife and local livelihoods.

Policy landscape

Nepal’s policy response has evolved to resolve the HWC interconnected challenges, zoonotic diseases and biodiversity loss. Adoption of ‘One Health Strategy 2019’ and ‘National Wildlife Health Action Plan 2023-2032’ aim to strengthen wildlife disease surveillance, conservation medicine, and inter-agency coordination. These policies establish a framework for managing risks at the human-animal-environment interface through an interdisciplinary lens.

However, challenges remain in implementation, including fragmented disease surveillance within protected areas and limited diagnostic capacity. Institutional silos among conservation, veterinary and public health authorities hinder real-time data sharing and coordinated responses. This impedes Nepal’s ability to proactively manage health threats at the interface.

Empowering local communities in buffer zones as frontline stakeholders is key to managing HWC. Residents, bearing the brunt of HWC, possess invaluable traditional ecological knowledge, including indigenous practices like crop guarding, seasonal land-use rotation and wildlife behavior interpretation. Strategies such as electric fences, predator-proof corrals and planting wildlife-unpalatable crops (peppermint) are effective. However, science-based, species-specific and landscape-specific conflict management strategies are recommended for more sustainable solutions.

Community-managed buffer zones around Chitwan National Park demonstrate how conservation can be economically beneficial through eco-tourism. Such incentives foster stewardship, transforming wildlife from threats to valued assets.

To shift from reactive conflict management to proactive coexistence, Nepal must invest in wildlife health surveillance, community resilience and economic incentives such as compensation schemes and eco-tourism revenue-sharing. This transition needs interdisciplinary collaboration, community awareness and effective policy into action.

Integrating the Buddhist philosophy, which emphasizes respect for all living beings and their freedom from suffering, can foster behavioral changes transforming HWC into opportunities for coexistence.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that Ukraine would have to make concessions over land that Russia had taken since 2014 as part of any agreement to end the war, The New York Times reported. 

Rubio spoke as he was flying to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for talks with senior Ukrainian officials, and 10 days after a contentious White House meeting between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky. The Trump administration halted military aid to Ukraine after the blowup, which centered on Mr. Trump’s refusal to include any security guarantees in a proposed deal involving Ukraine’s natural resources.

“The most important thing that we have to leave here with is a strong sense that Ukraine is prepared to do difficult things, like the Russians are going to have to do difficult things to end this conflict or at least pause it in some way, shape or form,” Mr. Rubio told reporters.

Rubio declined to offer the outline of a potential agreement but made clear that concessions by both sides would be central to diplomacy.

“I think both sides need to come to an understanding that there’s no military solution to this situation,” Mr. Rubio said. “The Russians can’t conquer all of Ukraine, and obviously it’ll be very difficult for Ukraine in any reasonable time period to sort of force the Russians back all the way to where they were in 2014.”

Rubio added that it would be imperative in future talks with Moscow to determine what Russia was willing to concede, according to The New York Times. 

“We don’t know how far apart they truly are,” Rubio said.

The talks on Tuesday likely will not delve into the proposed agreement on Ukrainian natural resources that Mr. Trump had described as compensation for U.S. military support during the three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion. He has said that an American financial interest in Ukrainian fossil fuels and rare-earth minerals would provide Ukraine with implied security.

Although the United States has stopped sharing some intelligence with Ukraine, including satellite imagery, Rubio said it was still providing Kyiv with information that allowed it to continue defending itself against Russian attacks. He also said that there had never been a threat of removing Ukraine’s access to Starlink, the internet service company owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Even as the United States has been pressuring Ukraine in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has also threatened to impose additional sanctions on Russia in response to Moscow’s continued military activity. Rubio said that the United States was trying to demonstrate that it still had ways to coerce Russia in an effort to bring it to the negotiating table with Ukraine.

Rubio said he and Ukrainian officials would most likely discuss the resumption of military assistance during the meetings on Tuesday. He said the U.S. position on the issue could change if he believed that Ukraine was seriously committed to peace.

“I can assure you this, we will not be providing military aid to the Russians,” Rubio said.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Elon Musk have clashed with Poland's foreign minister over the use of the tech billionaire's Starlink satellite internet system in Ukraine, BBC reported.

Musk said on X that Ukraine's "entire front line" would collapse if he turned the system off. Radoslaw Sikorski responded, saying his country paid for its use in Ukraine and a threat to shut it down would result in a search for another network.

Rubio dismissed Sikorski's claims and told him to be grateful, while Musk called him a "small man".

The exchange appeared to lead to Polish PM Donald Tusk calling on his country's allies to show respect for their weaker partners, rather than arrogance.

Starlink's system is part of SpaceX's venture to provide high-speed internet to remote and underserved areas. It has been used extensively by the Ukrainian military, according to BBC.

Sunday's exchange started when Musk posted that Starlink was the "backbone of the Ukrainian army" and that "their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off".

Sikorski then responded, saying that Poland was paying for the service.

"Starlinks for Ukraine are paid for by the Polish Digitization Ministry at the cost of about $50 million per year," Sikorski wrote. "The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers."

Getty Images Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski in front of a microphone in a jacket and red tie

In response, Rubio said Sikorski was "just making things up... no-one has made any threats about cutting Ukraine off from Starlink".

 "And say thank you because without Starlink Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now," he added.

Musk later responded to Sikorski's post calling him a "small man".

"Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink," he wrote.

On Monday morning Polish Prime Minister Tusk, without specifying who or what he was referring to, wrote on X: "True leadership means respect for partners and allies, BBC reported.

"Even for the smaller and weaker ones. Never arrogance. Dear friends, think about it."

The Starlink terminals are key to Ukraine's army operations and have been used since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022.

There are tens of thousands of terminals in the country, including up to 500 bought by the US Department of Defence in June 2023.