Usha Gurung: Business on her mind

Having turned just 24 and educated only up to the 10^th grade, Usha Gurung has been successfully running three businesses. Usha is a young businesswoman whose hard work and never-say-die attitude have earned her the success that she enjoys today. She has a clothing store, Pink, a b-boy dance institute and a bingo parlor.

Although Usha did want to continue her studies, she changed her mind because her family couldn’t afford it. With resolve in her heart, she vowed to be more successful than the ones who held a degree. As a child, she wanted to become a teacher but circumstances turned her into a businesswoman. She says she was always good with making money. When she was younger, she would sell marbles to her friends and make money. She was also good at wrestling and even made a few extra rupees defeating boys at wrestling. Though, she is glad that she is literate and has enough of an education to run her business without hindrance. At times she says she does feel sad about not having had studied further.

Usha started her clothing business with just Rs. 5,000 ($65) given to her by her father. With this money, she boughtclothes from khasa (chinese market) and sold it to shops in Kathmandu. She was only 14 at the time. With the profit she made, she opened up a small shop in Nayabazaar. When she completed her SLC, she had her citizenship certificate and passport made. She wanted to take her business a step further and so decided to go to Bangkok. She arranged for Rs. 2 lakhs ($2,600) and a list of names of places where she could buy clothes. Then she headed to Bangkok all alone. Despite being a pretty petite girl, she managed to carry loads and loads of clothes back from her visit to Bangkok.

She then started a wholesale business operating out of her home: buying clothes from Bangkok and selling them to retailers in Kathmandu. Later she opened up a shop at RB Complex.

“I don’t like doing the same business all the time,” Usha explains. “So when I was asked to invest in bingo games, I readily accepted.” She made pamphlets and posters and went around distributing and pasting them herself. Her efforts paid off and gradually the few people who came to play bingo started growing larger and larger. Now Usha is proud to be the first woman to run a bingo parlor in Nepal.

 After the success of her bingo venture, she opened up another clothing  store, PINK, at the Woodland Complex in Durbar Marg. “I never took the  wrong path. I was even ready to sell vegetables to make money. I turned  to what I thought will bring me most profit. I utilized all the money I had. I  started my business from khasa and now I’m here on the posh streets of  Durbar Marg. Nothing is impossible,” says Usha.

On her trips to Thailand, she made friends with Miki, a b-boy dancer.  She worked with him to open up a b-boy institute. Initially they brought over a team from Thailand who trained a few people from Nepal to become instructors. To date, some 100 students have trained in this dance form at her institute. As a drug prevention activity, her institute also trained 20-25 students for free to promote b-boying as an alternative to drugs and violence. Usha herself had an interest in dance from a very young age. She took part in several cultural shows but never took it up seriously. Now she wants to promote dance as a profession and help those with a passion for it.

Usha is the sole breadwinner of her family, having let her parents retire. She lives in Kathmandu with her two brothers, acting as their guardian and financier. She has fulfilled all the responsibilities that traditionally a son is expected to carry out and is proud of it. In the future she wants to be known as a businesswoman. She wants to try different kinds of business, decide which one she likes best and then spend all her life doing it. But for now, she just wants to try whatever she can. She wants to have fun, do all that she couldn’t do when she didn’t have the money. And she has no intention of settling down right away. She wants to get married only at around 29. She is confident that just like she has taken care of her family, she will be able to take care of her husband as well.

Interview by Elipha Pradhananga and Jeena Gurung, and Photography by Rishi Amatya, V.E.N.T! Magazine.