The story of Wai Wai begins around 35 years ago. Royal Nepal Airlines had already started flights to Thailand. Thai Airways had also started flying to Nepal. Many cartons of instant noodles could be seen trundling down the baggage belt once international flights landed in Kathmandu.
I had been looking for another product that could be made out of white flour. Pashupati Biscuits and Maha Laxmi Maida Mills were well established by then. A large portion of the white flour produced by the Maida Mills went into the making of Pashupati Biscuits. Still, the biscuit factory alone was not able to consume all the flour from the mills.
“Why don’t you try producing instant noodles?” Himalaya Pandey, a friend of mine, suggested to me one day. He was then working with Gorkha Travels, one of the leading travel and tour operators of Nepal in those days, and had noticed the large quantities of instant noodles arriving on the Bangkok–Kathmandu flights.
“Noodles are getting more popular in Nepal,” he said.
One of the reasons for the popularity of noodles was the growing number of Nepalis who were going abroad and trying out new foods. A second reason was the aggressive marketing campaigns launched in Nepal by two noodle companies. Gandaki Noodles had launched Rara while Nestlé India Limited’s Maggi was being imported in huge quantities. I concluded that nothing could be more appropriate than instant noodles for the consumption of white flour. I had my own packaging plant. All I needed was the technical knowledge related to noodle production. As far as the market was concerned, Rara and Maggi had blazed the trail. I just had to blacktop it.
Himalaya Pandey and I caught a Thai Airways flight to Bangkok, following the trail of the baggage belt.
Bangkok was not new to me. I have had good contacts there since the days of starting Arun Emporium. Berli Jucker, the company that had supplied the equipment for our flour mills, had its regional headquarters in Bangkok. Through Berli Jucker, I was able to meet with noodle producers there. There were three companies. I approached all of them, settling for Thai Preserved Foods as our technical collaborator. We did not need any additional support except to learn how to produce fully cooked instant noodles. The company was not big enough to give us any other kind of support either. It was owned by a gentleman called Kitty Pong Sri and some of his partners. He was a very creative and hard-working man but was happy with what he had. I invited him to visit Nepal to help me make my final decision, and he obliged.
After spending three days exploring the streets of Kathmandu and its markets, he asked me with his eyebrows raised, “Do you really want to start a noodles plant? The smallest lot will be 30,000 packets a day. Do you think you can ever sell this quantity in this country?”
I shared with him the famous story of two salesmen going to the same market; one returning with the report that since nobody eats there is no market, and the other coming back with a completely opposite story, that since nobody eats, this is the market!
That was how Wai Wai was born.
After the success of Wai Wai, we launched Mama noodles in the market. The chief executive of Thailand’s President’s Food, Pipat, came to see me. I thought it was about my registering the brand in Nepal but, on the contrary, he had come with a proposal for a joint venture.
I told him, “I’m ready for a joint venture, but it has to be on my terms.”
He did not accept my conditions. I felt his proposal was a ploy on his part to make my brand name subordinate to his. We could not agree on the terms. Mama forwarded another proposal through an investment bank we both dealt with. This was different from the first proposal. They wanted a joint venture in those countries where neither Wai Wai nor Mama had been introduced. They thought I should be grateful for the worldwide collaboration. But again, it would have entailed the surrendering of my brand. I rejected the offer again. In today’s world, the worth of a company does not lie in its fixed assets alone. In fact, they contribute only a small part to it. A company’s real worth lies in its intellectual property. That is why I have always stood firm when it comes to the brand name.
Here in Nepal, we are driven by a mindset of producing goods under others’ brand names, making huge profits while also paying royalties. But I chose the path of establishing my own brand. I think this strategy is the main factor that has driven the Chaudhary Group to where it is today. Following the strategy we drew up to globalize Wai Wai, we have expanded our presence and now sell in more than thirty-five countries. Establishing an ambitious goal for oneself can feel daunting, but one must rise to the challenge. That was how I felt when I signed the contract with Thai Food. They were, however, extremely supportive. They put me in touch with companies that manufactured plants for the production of instant noodles. I bought a plant of the smallest capacity from a Taiwanese company. I installed the first plant at Saibu, Bhainsepati, in Lalitpur district. The plant could produce 30,000 packets of instant noodles in an eight-hour period. That plant is still operating in Bhainsepati. However, we have many more plants today.
In those days, there were no channels for the systematic distribution of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) such as noodles and biscuits. Once the goods were produced, they were handed over to the wholesalers. I hired the late KR Sharma, a senior official at Nestlé India, to manage the market for Wai Wai. He worked with us for around nine years and played a pivotal role in strengthening the market, not just for Wai Wai, but for the entire Chaudhary Group.
Wai Wai hit the Nepal market in 1984. Now we needed a strong marketing campaign, and I give credit for the success of that campaign to Sharma. As part of his strategy, we produced a very popular advertisement for television featuring the model Dolly Gurung. Dolly became an overnight celebrity as a result of that ad, which was shot by Basudev’s cinematographer Prem Upadhyay. Wai Wai was hugely successful.
Within two years, Wai Wai had brought about a sea change in the eating habits of Nepalis. It became so popular that it virtually displaced Nestlé’s Maggi from the Nepal market, making Nepal self-sufficient when it came to instant noodles. We set up our second plant at the CG Industrial Park in Nawalparasi as the demand for Wai Wai rose meteorically. We bought yet another plant that was being sold by an Indonesian instant noodles company. Today we produce approximately 1.5 million packets of Wai Wai in Nepal alone, fifty times the quantity of 30,000 packets that Kitty Pong Sri had doubted we could sell.
Excerpted with permission from Making It Big: The Inspiring Story of Nepal’s First Billionaire, Binod K Chaudhary, Penguin Business.
