THE ROAD TO MEGA SUCCESS
BINOD CHAUDHARY, NEPAL’S FIRST BILLIONAIRE, TALKS ABOUT HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY, AND DREAMING BIG
Nepal’s first billionaire talks about his biography
Tired of reading about failing and troubled business houses every day? Here is refreshing change in the form of Binod Chaudhary, Nepal’s first billionaire. His company Chaudhary Group owns Wai Wai noodles, and also a big chunk of Alila Hotels, stakes in a smattering of Taj properties around the world (Taj Exotica Maldives, Taj Samudra Sri Lanka...), real estate and much, much more. His recent autobiography, Making
It Big, should be this summer’s must-read for everyone. It charts the immensely successful and interesting life story of a self-made man who never forgot to enjoy or live his life while navigating his way up a volatile, unstable and unfriendly environment.
After surviving the 2010 Chile earthquake while on holiday, Chaudhary realised that some of his most treasured possessions were his experiences and memories. It is for this reason he wanted to share these stories with the world. But there was one problem: “More than 90 per cent of the people I have dealt with in different positions are still alive and unless I can be absolutely honest and candid, there is no point in putting down everything in a book. I also had to think about what the ramifications would be once the book came out. Lastly, I had to think about how I could afford to take out the time that writing a book needs,” says Chaudhary.
Once he sorted out the issues, Chaudhary got down to penning his story about a rebellious boy who never believed in his father’s advice: “You have to sacrifice something to gain something.” The book is about a boy from a conservative Marwari family based in Nepal, who excelled in academics, sang for Radio Nepal, dabbled in movies, went on a hunger strike to get his parents to buy him a car, fought to marry the love of his life (and got his ex fiancee’s relatives to help organise his wedding!), ran some successful nightclubs dressed in bell bottoms, while sporting long hair, and successfully made his mark in the corporate world in his early 20s after his father’s illness, while taking on powerful enemies like the Nepal Royal family, politicians and business associates who wanted him out.
“Life changed when I was 18, pretty much like in the movies, where you go to the hospital and find your father staring at you in the ICU. Though my father could not speak, I could read his eyes, they were saying to me, ‘You are still so young... not ready to take over... I have so much unfinished business, younger kids to settle, a daughter who needs to be married, business in the hands of so many other family members...’ That is when I said to myself — ‘this is my time, I have to step in. When I got into it, I was thrown in from a completely different life, into something that is very, very serious. I was thrown into a circle where everyone was my father’s age, so there was a huge issue even in the minds of those people. Whether it was people at work or the government officials I was dealing with, never took me seriously because I was this guy associated with nightlife, singing for Radio Nepal’...”
But this negative mindset that people had towards him was positive for Chaudhary. “It helped me as it made me fight back. That behaviour and reaction made me stronger and my resolve to prove myself.
I did things differently, was always bold and courageous in my approach