IT IS POSSIBLE to become a billionaire in Nepal without inventing a product or listing a single company abroad. It is also possible to document that ascent in an autobiography without attracting regulatory inquiry. Binod Chaudhary, Nepal’s richest man and self-styled “first billionaire”, has done both. His rise is not a triumph of free enterprise. It is a case study in what happens when bureaucracies stall and states turn into networking platforms. In such a system capital formation follows a peculiar logic: relationships compound faster than returns.
What sets Mr Chaudhary apart is his willingness to describe them with disarming candour. “All you need to do is hobnob with the right people,” he said. Mr Chaudhary has demonstrated this with unusual transparency, narrating a career built not so much on boardroom drama as on carefully curated guest lists and strategic generosity.
By his own telling, the trajectory began in earnest at Copper Floor, a glitzy Kathmandu nightclub he opened in the 1970s. There the city’s elite—royal, bureaucratic and business—danced, drank and dealt. One of the few private ventures of its kind at the time, it offered Mr Chaudhary an entrée into the circles that mattered. By 1980 he was financing the palace’s campaign in a national referendum. By 1982 he had handed over half his steel business to the king’s brother. The gesture, he notes, was what transformed his fortunes.
Returns followed quickly. Import licences, lucrative contracts and exemptions from the sort of scrutiny faced by lesser-connected rivals allowed his Chaudhary Group (CG) to consolidate an industrial base in a country with little manufacturing to speak of. From cement and cigarettes to telecoms and banking, CG’s operations now touch nearly every aspect of Nepali commerce. Its most visible success, the Wai Wai noodle brand, originated as a way to soak up excess flour at a biscuit plant. More than two billion packets are now sold a year, and the brand enjoys cult status from Mumbai to Manila.
Nepal, though, is a compact playing field for ambitions of this size. As the domestic market plateaued and capital controls loosened, CG expanded abroad, often in places that foreign investors would approach only with a bodyguard and a prayer. The group has expressed interest in Iraq and Afghanistan, built hospitality ventures across Africa and Southeast Asia. Regulated markets, Mr Chaudhary complains, tend to be “misfits” for his methods. Still CG maintains stakes in such places, if only to lend the brand a global patina.
Its structure is suitably complex. While many units remain privately held, a few—such as Nabil Bank—have been floated. The bank’s acquisition by an offshore CG proxy caused the Nepal Rastra Bank some heartburn. Mr Chaudhary admits the regulators were not entirely wrong in suggesting he had skirted the law. But the deal stuck, as most of his tend to. Today CG claims over 20,000 employees, across 202 companies and 261 brands the world over.
The business has passed through its dynastic rites. His eldest son oversees Nepali operations, where proximity to the state remains indispensable in sectors like power and telecoms. Other family members handle hospitality, infrastructure and overseas ventures. Corporate governance, where it exists, is handled in-house.
Mr Chaudhary has also moved from whispering in the ears of power to occupying its benches. He serves in parliament as a representative of the Nepali Congress, a party of centre-left vintage but ever-shifting loyalties. His current role is not his first stint in public office. He has advised governments of varying ideological hues and navigated coalition politics with the same fluency he once reserved for royal intrigues. He insists politics and business should remain distinct. Few careers better demonstrate their entanglement.
His wealth remains a subject of fascination, and some discomfort. Forbes pegs it at $2bn, up $200mn from last year, placing him 1,889th globally. In Nepal where GDP per capita is below $1,500, such figures are not widely viewed as aspirational. Critics accuse him of monopolistic practices, political rent-seeking and exporting the logic of patronage to other fragile states. Mr Chaudhary prefers to call it adaptation. When institutions falter, he argues, relationships take their place. “When in Rome,” he likes to say, “do as the Romans do.”
His worldview fits neatly into a wider pattern. In many emerging markets, economic power is entwined with political discretion. Entrepreneurs operate in regulatory penumbras, where influence is worth more than innovation and discretion tends to replace policy. In such ecosystems, business empires are built not by disrupting incumbents but by becoming them.
Mr Chaudhary’s empire, now sprawling across four time zones and more business sectors than most governments can regulate, is a case study in this model. Whether such systems can sustain generational continuity is unclear. Succession plans are in place; the real test will be steering through a world less tolerant of ambiguity and more expectant of transparency.
Yet the original lesson endures. In Kathmandu, where mountain air thins out ambition and bureaucracy clogs supply chains, those who master the art of relationships rise fastest. Nearly 50 years after launching his first disco, Mr Chaudhary remains the country’s most successful networker-in-chief. Governance may one day catch up. Until then Nepal’s most reliable growth sector will remain the business of influence. ■