Binod Chaudhary, Nepal’s only billionaire, made his fortune selling instant noodles with flavours such as Masala Delight and Chicken Pizza. Now he has enlisted China’s Huawei to help build a telecoms network in his home country, wading into a global power contest.
Mr Chaudhary, whose privately held Chaudhary Group conglomerate deals in everything from banking to tobacco, plans to build the network to introduce 4G mobile services, before rolling out 5G. He is joining forces with Turkcell, the Turkish mobile company, as well as buying Huawei’s equipment, and hopes to expand the business internationally.
But in doing so Mr Chaudhary, who is worth $1.7bn according to Forbes, risks becoming mired in a budding technological cold war: ahead of the mass adoption of 5G networks, the US is pursuing an aggressive campaign to try to make businesses shun Huawei, whose equipment it says is vulnerable to espionage.