Dugar Group Nepal: Business Monopoly as Means to Control Dubious Ends

Why the oldest "existing" business group of Nepal is an eyesore

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This post should be seen as continuation to the previous post. Back by popular demand—our online readership and word-of-mouth combined (Reach) have skyrocketed 🎆🧨… ode to the power of internet!

Market creates ground for entrepreneurs who see gaps between what public want, what is available and bridges the gap. Items may be available locally, have to be brought in or invented to satisfy local demands depending on affordability. Understanding of Supply and Demand economic model in microeconomics and applying them locally is crucial to genuine ingrown entrepreneurs. While the demand side of the equation is mostly natural determined by the market (people), the supply side is entrepreneurial comprising of Private, Public and Government facilitators. Both come with their own restrictions such as desire, available capital, human resources, goods etc. In a competitive market scenario, demand and supply can be artificially created. While artificial demand plays with people’s psychology and usually deployed via marketing and mostly harmless, artificial supply deployed by controlling goods to determine price is harmful to society. Such as hoarding goods by first monopolizing supplies when demands are expected to rise creating artificial scarcity, making way for artificial price rise. Company overstocks(over-supply) are viewed negatively in publicly traded stock markets. This is a check deployed in modern economies for companies’ valuation—if played fair and square.

Without proper check and balances of a system even the basic model of Supply and Demand levers can be manipulated paving way for market monopoly, wiping out any competitor and spreading quickly across industry verticals. Huge unaccounted and illicit capital resources at the hands of few private players is a risk small market like Nepal with huge openings to market access on all sides constantly face. The resultant scale and size of impact within and outside border limits is simply too huge and unfair by all means. Think of it as a diving board with a spring coil made from out-of-the-world material with ability to raise divers to inhuman level. Could be good for swimmers but the splash, once divers make contact with pool water surface leaves entire spectators in all cotton attire drenched. Not something a swim event spectator would relish.

Nepal’s sovereignty may be a draw for those who see potential to make an impact beyond borders drawing political strings across boundaries. The same template used in nations beyond immediate neighborhood but has since come under one giant roof like a magical Frisby tied to an unseen chord somehow making its way back after meandering around.

This giant financial roof of Nepal is the Dugar Group with origins in Marwar Rajasthan. Their humble beginnings in east Nepal can be traced back to a house in the picture below. Dugar group took off in Nepal as a textile behemoth. To see them reduce the textile branding to current day run-of-the-mill Woman Clothing(!) store even if it’s rented out speaks volume about their care for self-roots and origins. The group has an annual turnover of over US $8 Billion (~NRs. 800 crore) yet the chairman’s birth house left as if it were some street corner pawn shop. Rock-A-Fellas of Nepal forgetting their roots doesn’t augur well for their future prospects, business wise or spiritually.

Just so the readers are informed Dugar Groups in Nepal surfaced in three different avatars: TM Dugar (Since Unknown - Flash in the Pan), MV Dugar (Nepal Money Managers/Diwan Since 1890 AD) and KL Dugar (Since 1989 - Uni-horn Missing in Action). All three run by brothers between Rajasthan, India and Kathmandu, Nepal with nodes spread globally. NI and our partners tried to reach out to all three including their in-laws, but our pings went unanswered.

Unaccounted and illicit cash that moved unperturbed back and forth between Nepal and India for decades could only be mended, to a large extent, after 2016 Currency Ban, popularly known as Demonetization. Demo clogged up Indian currency on Nepal side monkey washed in business shops mostly from tourist areas and bundled off with fake currency on their way back. Genuine Indian paper currency provided cover for fake currency printed in shops which went on an overdrive in the last decade on Nepal side. NI partners have been collecting evidence for 10 years now (over 40 years of collective experience) driving back and forth between all major border crossings—some manned while some unmanned on both sides earlier. This has since changed. If you venture out to the border areas now, you will be greeted with smiling border patrol agents on both sides. NI managed to collect evidence from major ink and paper vendors in Putali Sadak Gullies Nepal and have completed investigations. The clogged-up cash were not just Indian denomination but also foreign currency. It’s like going out net fishing in a pond expecting local fish but you end up with prawns. So, cash ban proved to be super effective for Nepal and her guardians.

Dugar Group and their sidekicks controlled most cash intensive store fronts in all of Nepal. We can only determine their stake and share by how much is stashed up in their abode. With supply and demand levers in their hands and security in their pockets, they went unchecked in any direction they moved.

The group claims to be Agri-Industrialists. Coming from Marwar region in Rajasthan, which means ‘Desert’ in Sanskrit, to an area in East Nepal Terai plains where water is abundant and soil fertile, not sure what innovative ideas were propounded by desert experts with no agricultural background. In half the amount of time the group has been in business, the Israelis have come out with ‘more crop for a drop’, vertical farming, seed technology and various other innovative methods in arid desert climate while Nepal’s pseudo-Agripreneurs resorted to packaging cereals, nuts, namkeens and other condiments. East Nepal is blessed with the most fertile soil of Nepal known for Rice, Maize, mangoes, Litchis and various other items that grow naturally with minimal effort. This proves that the group is an Agri-quack and their Agri investment is just namesake used for land and property usurping. To their credit they have rice mills, jute and sugarcane processing units like explained in this post. However, all three failed massively with some shortchanging farmers and labors who supplied raw materials just last year. While the group invested in other verticals their factory vendors and workers were left out on a lurch.

How they were able to convince the then dispensation for massive land parcels at giveaway prices in spite of no agricultural background and only processing units, designed for wider impact from poverty alleviation program, leaves us at NI amazed. It must be the capital exchange lure or some other deals that gave them control over vast array of Nepal’s lands. The roots of their seed capital and subsequent capital infusion for multiple hydropower projects earlier should be a matter of investigation. In all likelihood, the capital origins could be Rajasthan and land deals between Nepal rulers then and their Rajasthan holdings. What exact exchanges took place, we can’t really pin-point at this point.

The group’s textile business changed several hands including that to a notorious Rakta Chandan dealer Shashikant Agarwal. We all are familiar to the rock-bottom state of Nepal textile (Clothing). Was evident during recent Dusshera festivities when people from every household traditionally buy new pair of clothes.

The Dugars were also the sole authority in Nepal for Indian Railways Ticket Booking. Tickets were booked under foreigners’ quota. However, Nepalis could also use regular bookings. This leaves room for suspicion that they could play around people’s name to sneak someone undercover, if needed. Travelers to many parts of India from Nepal were by mostly by train. Dugars controlled ticket booking from Nepal including positioning agents in border areas for ticketing. We’re not sure if they were keeping tab on who’s visiting India including non-Nepalis. If they were keeping tab on land routes, they were most likely keeping tab on who’s flying in/out of Kathmandu also.

Dugars and their subsidiaries were major beer importers and bottlers in Nepal, controlling exquisite, expired wholesale liquor from Thailand auction housed near City Center near their new abode in Naxal using fake stickers from old- Delhibazaar. Hoarding goods, alcohols during festivities, flowing colorfully Labeled whisky free of cost to their kith and kin their staple handshake gesture.

Dugar Group was the supplier of the unitary piece Mahindra Mustang (Mahindra Force name changed ) of Golcha Automobiles bloated as the TATAs 👋🏻👋🏻 of Nepal then. Baburam Bhattarai’s indigenous Made in Nepal Kathmandu safari pomp vehicle didn’t even last the number of days he served in office. Some claimed parts were manufactured indigenously while some claimed that it was all assembled in Nepal with parts from China and India. Regardless, the group subsequently planned demise of their fake indigenous show via political musical chair game since further probes would render them exposed. Were the group a major enabler in creating ruckus in Nepal and can we trust any more modern digital businesses in their hands? Something all of us have to think about. The era of automobile imports ranking #1 started during this period which was also the group’s main cash-cow for business turnover to showcase business credibility globally. All of their margins coming from free natural resource usage.

To display the support Dugar group gets in Nepal, most likely for investors, the chairman and their family were paraded on a makeshift float of a truck in Likhu, Nepal resembling elephant ride of the yesteryear Royals during coronation ceremonies— a sight normal Nepalis liken to extravaganza before the helicopter era. The psychology of the group to appear Royal is evident from this. Says a lot about their mindset. The same year this happened, chairman’s kids and heir to his imaginary(i) throne built out of haystack were busy transitioning businesses in Iceland under the garb of tours.

Mata Ambe 🕉️is also a Kuldevi of Dugars. Going by the Gatha, she was saved after praying to Lord Shiva and had to make her way into the ground to save herself from a forced marriage. Is this why there’s a colony near Naxal Bhagwati 🕉️ temple? Was she disturbed by tantra performance in Naxal residence leading to Earthquake in Nepal? Who supplied the scriptures? Is the colony a carefully crafted plan hatched for a long time? We at NI will have to meditate on this. If nothing, at least the Fear of God (Mata Ambe) should have stopped them in their evil pathway. [7:33]

Maa Suswani, incarnation of Ambe Maa or Maa Adishakti 🕉️

Naxal Bhagwati 🕉️

Going by their historical connection to people in higher echelons of the society— particularly, the security apparatus of Nepal, who most likely provided veils in exchange for few crumbs thrown at them, are complicit to the crimes this group continued unabated for so long. Whether the same group is an enabler and extension to notorious art dealers Subash Kapoor/Nayef Homsi in Nepal is still a matter of investigation. The complete impunity in which they operated earlier in the region says a lot. They did not even flinch at the thought of Fear of God. Their crime motivations are more than just money. Money being means to achieve a dubious end— Hawa Bharnu (filling the air with left-hand energy), which was inscribed in Nepal’s first Muluki Ain to discourage these societal ills.

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