“You learn by doing a job, not by watching it being done,” Binod Chaudhary’s father would often say. “Supervision is not about being the ‘big boss’. If you lend a hand, you get better results because you’re not only showing your workers that you value what they do, but also that nobody can get away with not working when you’re part of the team.”
Looking at his son’s trajectory, laid out in immense and candid detail in his memoir, Making It Big, of how a brand made a billionaire, his father would have been proud of how deeply young Binod took his wisdom to heart. The man who took Wai Wai Noodles to the world, Chaudhary, who entered the Forbes billionaires’ list in 2013, is a fitness enthusiast, avid trekker, writer and filmmaker, with 122 companies in five countries and 76 brands in the global market.
The memoir is an immensely readable account of a wide-ranging life. It begins with an earthquake in Chile in 2010 and ends with a devastating earthquake in Nepal in 2015. Sandwiched between these two natural calamities is his personal story, engagingly written by him in Nepali and translated into English and several other languages.
This is not just Chaudhary’s story, but of the men on whose shoulders he stood to get where he is today. Of a Marwari family that migrated to Nepal from Rajasthan, 140 years ago, Chaudhary’s grandfather was the assistant to a trading family that had been invited to Nepal by Juddha Shumsher, the influential Prime Minister at the time. A newly transplanted young man, Chaudhary’s grandfather learned how to trade in an alien country from scratch, through sheer will and unwavering perseverance.
Chaudhary tells of how his grandfather walked for days, along the old Indo-Tibetan trade route of Chisapani, in order to reach the trading hubs on the border; of how the old man built his own textile emporiums from scratch. In the unique garb of a mobile trader, Chaudhary’s grandfather would visit his customers, including the Rana families, with a bale of clothes and textiles. His father – then a young boy not yet in his teens – would accompany him, growing to be the older man’s most trustworthy trading assistant.
The apprenticeship which Chaudhary’s father got from his father was invaluable. That, then, was the beginning of the Chaudhary Empire which Binod would carry forward by taking his business outside the country and into new areas. The young Chaudhary grew up, watching and learning from his father. In the process, he learned two crucial lessons. “A person who has big dreams should take on tasks that push his limits.” He writes, “Capability is something you can acquire.”
Making It Big tells of how a young Chaudhary was prevented from travelling to India to study chartered accountancy. It was only when his father was diagnosed with heart disease and his mother passed away from cancer that he realised that he needed to step in to take over the reins. His first independent business was in 1973—a discothèque company called Copper Floor. The company was a huge success, because of the many wealthy and powerful people who visited the club. In 1979, Chaudhary made a deal with Japanese electronics giant National Panasonic, which was his first multinational deal.
Wai-Wai Noodles, the brand that would make Binod Chaudhary a household name, was born in 1984 and thereafter, Binod would follow his father’s trajectory by diversifying into hospitality, telecom, FMCG (food and beverage), cement and financial services. To lay out his career point by point would be giving away the rest of the story – besides being on the boring side of chronological.
Making It Big is a worthwhile read for every young entrepreneur or startup aspirant – just to get a better sense of how you can succeed against the odds, and indeed, how you can make the odds work in your favour. For instance, Chaudhary often likes to tell the story of how, as a 16-year-old, he stood outside The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai and marvelled at it, too afraid to walk in. He writes about it in his book and also the fact that his group has since gone on to partner with Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces in a number of countries. In fact, India holds a special place in his businessman’s heart: in the early 1990s, he partnered with Taj to rescue two properties in Sri Lanka and the Maldives, both regions plagued by unrest. Since then, Chaudhary has acquired and built four resorts in India’s key sanctuaries – Panna, Pench, Bandhavgarh, and Kanha.
Then, there is the journey of his growth in the hospitality business. Chaudhary also explains the development of CG Hotels & Resorts. At the close of the memoir, there are eight global offices operating eighty-eight hotels under eight different brands in eleven countries come under CG Hotels & Resorts: from a Hilton property near New York’s JFK Airport to the Alila Diwa range of resorts across Southeast Asia, including one in Goa and wellness resorts in Thailand and the Philippines. In the second volume of Chaudhary’s memoirs, due soon, that growth story will be taken forward.
Throughout the memoir, Chaudhary never fails to situate his home country centrally in his own story. At every step of the way, he reminds readers that his sole priority as a businessman is to take Nepal forward. That has been at the centre of the warren of businesses that he has built, in a country that has been a perpetual laggard in most economic indicators. In the course of his life, this has necessitated getting his own hands involved in the multi-coloured pie that has been Nepalese politics over the years. Today, Chaudhary is known as a seasoned politician, an elected member of parliament, one who is capable of navigating the complex currents in politics to crystallise his position. But that wasn’t always the case. Making It Big also tells a parallel story of Chaudhary’s connection with the palace – a central figure in politics and economy – and with local politicians.
In the process of telling this story, Binod Chaudhary introduces his modern reader to the complex layers of history and politics that clothed the Himalayan kingdom through the 1950s and 1980s. It is rare that a businessman goes into such depth about the political warp and weft that keeps his own business interests alive, much less his own personal role in all of this. But Making It Big makes no bones about that fact: a refreshing change from the others in the genre.
Making It Big then is not just a memoir, nor is it a self-serving tale of survival against the odds. On the other hand, it reads very much like a personal account – a diary perhaps – that Chaudhary has kept over the years. Perhaps to remind himself of the distance he has travelled and what it has cost to get to the top and stay there.
Making It Big: The Inspiring Story of Nepal’s First Billionaire, Binod K Chaudhary, Penguin Business.