Oodles from noodles in Nepal

The noodle magnate Binod Chaudhary, known half-jokingly in Kathmandu as "Nepal's one-man multinational", has long been the country's most prominent businessman.

This year, Forbes pushed him further into the limelight by listing him as the first Nepali to become a dollar billionaire. And the burly Mr Chaudhary shows few signs of slowing down. Among his myriad business and political ambitions, he now wants his Wai Wai instant noodle brand to win the struggle against competitors such as Nestle's Maggi and the Indonesian group Indofood's Indomie.

"We have committed to making Wai Wai the world's largest brand some day," he says on a balcony at his headquarters overlooking the crowded and smoky streets of Kathmandu. "Some of my friends in the industry may call it a tall claim, but I think you've got to dream big."

Mr Chaudhary first began producing noodles in 1984 in collaboration with Thai Preserved Food Factory. The privately held Chaudhary Group discloses very little financial information but he says the group's noodle sales amount to about $1bn a year - or roughly half the non-Indonesian noodle sales of Indofood.

Nowadays, Mr Chaudhary's interests extend far beyond instant noodles. In the 40 years since taking over the family company from his ailing father at the age of 18, he has expanded the group's industrial reach and taken its operations beyond south Asia to the US, Africa and the Middle East.

He has entered a bewildering array of businesses in the domestic Nepali market and has four main areas of operation abroad: hotels in four continents, including joint ventures with India's Taj Hotels in the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand; manufacture and export of fast-moving consumer goods (including the noodles); property; and a private equity company with investment plans for cement plants from Myanmar to Mozambique.

"We do a little bit, dabble here and there, but by and large these are the four areas where we are growing globally," he says.

Today the Chaudhary Group, together with its Singapore-based Cinnovation unit, spans 90 companies and 60 brands employing nearly 8,000 people. The business would be unrecognisable to his grandfather Bhuramull, a member of the Marwari business clan from Rajasthan in neighbouring India who moved to Nepal as a young man and began importing textiles in the late 19th century.

Diversified conglomerates driven by powerful individuals may now be unfashionable in the west, but in the chaotic and often highly corrupt markets of south Asia, including Nepal, they have advantages, as Mr Chaudhary makes clear.

"I guess that happens in most developing economies - a strong company always lands up having the first sort of opportunity to innovate a new business," he says. "They're entrepreneurial, and they're not scared.

"Look at Tata [the Indian conglomerate]. Tata called themselves 'from salt to IT' . . . and they're still diversifying. They're going to start a new airline, OK? And they are in hotels, they are in steel, they are in - you name it."

The background to his own group's rapid diversification and expansion was simple, Mr Chaudhary says. "In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s we would on the one hand try to build our core competencies, which is branded, fast-moving consumer goods. But at the same time, we would not leave the other opportunities which came our way, because what was our strength? [It] was creating organisation, finding new talents, forging partnerships, putting the resources together."

Japan, he says, was his "business school". As a young man travelling on business to Japan in the 1970s, Mr Chaudhary not only learnt Japanese - prompted by his inability to order the vegetarian food he wanted without knowing the language. He also came to admire the way Japanese companies put available technology to use in the interests of their customers and of their own profits.

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"I saw how the Japanese work - the work culture of the Japanese, the team spirit of the Japanese, the really meticulous way of planning and managing things," says Mr Chaudhary, who imported Suzuki vehicles and struck deals with Panasonic and other Japanese companies in everything from textiles to beverages.

"Perhaps one of the reasons why we are successful is that I was young. I was fresh. All those teachings influenced my way of working, and I tried to replicate that in Nepal, which I did to a large extent. We were miles ahead of our competition because we were following the practices - or we were at least trying to make a sincere attempt to follow the practices - of Japan in those days in terms of business, in terms of organisation-building, in terms of training, in terms of R&D."

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This has left time for the elder Mr Chaudhary to nurse his political ambitions in a country desperate for coherent leadership.

He served in the first Constituent Assembly elected in 2008 after the end of the Maoist insurgency, but its mandate expired last year after it failed to agree on a new constitution, and a new assembly was elected on November 19.

"Everybody knows me, with good reason, in Nepal," he says, while acknowledging that he is not sure precisely how or when or with which political party he might seek office. "Neither do I need money by going into politics. So my objective of going into politics would be to create an economically vibrant country."

Asked whom he admires, he names Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar of India (the chief ministers of the states of Gujarat and Bihar respectively), Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan and Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand. The last two names suggest Mr Chaudhary sees a role for tycoons to apply their recipes for commercial success in the less tractable world of politics.

"You've got to be absolutely clear about what is your goal. And it can't be a hazy, confused sort of goal full of deviations," he says. "Then you've got to be able to put together a team . . . You've got to deal with corruption. You've got to deal with inaction."

Mr Chaudhary confidently declares that Nepal is "not a difficult country to govern", which would come as a surprise to the kings, Maoists and others who have tried to run it over the past century.

As a businessman, however, he insists his focus would be on exploiting natural resources such as hydropower and otherwise helping to make the country richer.

"I do not want to claim that I have solutions to all the problems," he says. "I have solutions to one part of the prob­lem, which is the economic development, which is the infrastructure building, which is to sell Nepal and bring in people who can help to take it to the next level."

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