Jiba Lamichhane

During the Soviet era, Russians were not allowed to own private property. Fifteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow has nearly as many multi-millionaires as New York. And some of them are Nepalis. 

Knowledge of English and Russian as well as prior exposure to the free market allowed Nepali students in the Soviet Union to adjust faster to the consumer boom in the post-communist era. So they got married and settled down here. Not even in that bastion of global capitalism, the United States, has the Nepali diaspora struck it as rich as it has in Russia. 

Jiba Lamichhane came to Russia to study engineering in 1986. He used to be a dealer for Sony, LG and Samsung in Russia. "There would be long queues even before we opened the stores, we sold goods worth hundreds of thousands of dollars every day. There was just so much pent-up demand the profit margin was 35-40 percent," recalls Lamichhane of the period just after 1990. 

The Nepalis thrived because locals lacked the business acumen in banking and exposure to the outside world. But now the Russians have learnt fast, and the business is more competitive. Lamichhane is managing director of Techno Trust, a company manufacturing the Elson brand LCD tvs for the Russian market.