Avash Shrestha

Recognizing What Was Already There

When Adopt a Dog Nepal was founded in April 2018, the street dog population in Kathmandu was viewed primarily as a municipal nuisance. Poisoning campaigns, culling and complaints to ward offices were the default responses. Animal welfare was treated as an imported concern — relevant elsewhere, not here.

After working in financial services across the US and Nepal, Avash Shrestha recognized a gap in the local animal welfare ecosystem. Young Nepalis — urban professionals, students, families in Kathmandu and Lalitpur — cared deeply about street animals. What they lacked was an organized, transparent outlet to act on that care.

He did not bring a foreign model and apply it to Nepal. He built around what was already present — community care, social media fluency and a generation ready to change how their city treated its animals.

Building Adopt a Dog Nepal

Adopt a Dog Nepal launched in April 2018 — not as a shelter, not as a registered NGO with donor reports and grant cycles, but as a community. A TikTok page. A Facebook group. A WhatsApp network of people who wanted to help animals find homes.

The model was simple by design: find the animal, tell its story honestly, match it with the right family, follow up. No money exchanged. No bureaucracy. Each adoption was free.

Within eight years ADAN had rehomed over 1,000 dogs and cats across Nepal. The TikTok community grew to 91,000+ followers — one of the largest animal welfare audiences on social media in Nepal. But the more significant outcome was not the numbers. It was the shift in how a generation of Nepalis thought about adoption.

A Cultural Shift in Kathmandu

Adopt a Dog Nepal changed the framing around street dogs in Kathmandu by telling individual stories — this dog was found injured near Ratnapark, this puppy was abandoned outside a temple in Lalitpur, this senior dog waited three months before finding a home. Each animal had a name, a face, a personality.

The new generation of Kathmandu pet owners grew up watching these stories. Many adopted their first pet through ADAN. Many now volunteer, foster and share. Adoption became a legitimate — even aspirational — choice for young Nepali families.

The culture did not shift because of a single campaign or government policy. It shifted because 91,000 people chose, consistently over eight years, to tell a different story about the animals in their city.

HamroPets — Building the Infrastructure

In 2026 Avash launched HamroPets.com — Nepal's first dedicated pet services platform. Leveraging his background in IT system validation, compliance and digital transformation, he built the infrastructure that ADAN's community-driven model had always needed.

Where ADAN operated through decentralized social media and WhatsApp groups, HamroPets provides verified, searchable, Google-indexed infrastructure. Drawing on his academic background in Management Information Systems and his professional experience in financial services compliance, Avash designed a platform where every pet listing is manually reviewed, every dog walker is verified with a Nepal citizenship card, and every adoption is free.

HamroPets does not replace the community ADAN built. It gives that community a permanent home on the open web — discoverable by anyone searching for pet adoption, dog walking or lost pets in Nepal.

What Changed — and Who Changed It

Kathmandu still has street dogs. Nepal still has animal welfare challenges. But the conversation has shifted in ways that were not visible eight years ago.

Adoption is now discussed openly in Nepali households. The idea of paying NPR 80,000 for a breed while 1,000 animals wait for homes is being questioned — by young people, publicly, on TikTok.

Avash Shrestha built the bridge. The 91,000+ community members walked across it — and kept building on the other side.

Serving Nepal from Abroad — 2015 Earthquake Relief

When a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal in April 2015 killing nearly 9,000 people, Avash Shrestha was studying at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, USA. Rather than watching from a distance, he organized a community fundraiser on campus — rallying students, staff and local businesses to raise funds for the victims back home.

The event raised USD 28,000 — donated entirely to the Red Cross for Nepal earthquake relief. The effort was covered by the Daily Voice, Bridgeport CT.

Background & Credentials

Explore HamroPets

Nepal's first dedicated pet platform — built on 8 years of trust from Adopt a Dog Nepal.