Nearly six months after fire gutted some of Nepal’s most recognizable retail landmarks, the blue-and-yellow towers of Bhat-Bhateni Super Store – the symbols of rising consumer economy – are returning to the skyline.
Today, when the political parties are making tall claims – about economy and job creation to attract the vote – Min Bahadur Gurung is walking his talks by reopening the Maharajgunj Bhatbhateni, and ensuring thousands of jobs not to be lost.
On February 7, Koteshwor Bhatbhateni – that became unlikely battlegrounds on September 8-9, as a nationwide Gen Z uprising collided with entrenched corporate and political power – reponed.
At the center of this upheaval stood Bhat-Bhateni chair Min Bahadur Gurung, the self-made entrepreneur behind the country’s largest retail chain and one of its most polarizing public figures.
The Maharajgunj building of Bhat-Bhateni Supermarket, which was completely damaged by a fire during the Gen Z protest on September 9, has formally resumed its operations from today (Thursday) after being reconstructed with state-of-the-art technology.
After reopening the Maharajgunj outlet today, Gurung says that being able to rise from the ashes and resume the service felt like ‘taking two steps forward after healing from deep pain.’
“I don’t even want to remember the incident on the September 9; it was a rare and unimaginable event,” he adds, “Just as war brought devastation to Nagasaki in Japan in 1945 or to Munich in 1944, this incident was like a battlefield. But we rose again from those ashes.”
Gurung, now over 60 years old, said that although the fire reduced years of his hard work to ashes, it ignited in him the energy and determination with a positive anger of a 25-26-year-old. “I have no option but to win. Where would I run away to?” he adds. “I have to live in this very country and soil.”
He emphasized that since the building is not merely a commercial center but a place frequented by thousands of people, ‘complete safety’ has also been fully ensured.
As of Thursday, two of the 12 Bhat-Bhateni facilities that were completely destroyed by fire during the September 9 unrest have officially reopened.
Bhat-Bhateni first reopened its Baluwatar Warehouse, the company’s central logistical hub formally on December 4, 2025, exactly three months after the arson attacks. The Koteshwor outlet resumed operations on February 7, 2026, following five months of reconstruction.
While these two outlets represent the only fully gutted sites to have resumed operations thus far, sixteen other branches – consisting of the seven that were never damaged and nine that were only partially vandalized – resumed services shortly after the protests in September 2025.
Reconstruction is continuing at a rapid pace for the remaining ten destroyed outlets. The Boudha branch is currently scheduled to reopen by end of March. Gurung has laid out a strategic roadmap to have all remaining destroyed locations, including those in Pokhara, Dharan, and Biratnagar, operational in a ‘grander form’ by the Dashain festival in late 2026.
What began as youth-led protests against digital censorship and corruption escalated into one of the most destructive episodes of civil unrest in Nepal’s history. Bhat-Bhateni emerged as the most visible corporate casualty: 12 outlets were reduced to ashes, nine others vandalised and looted, and thousands of livelihoods temporarily thrown into uncertainty.
The attacks were not random. For a long time, a false narrative cultivated by political parties had created negative perceptions of the private sector among the public. Leaders with no transparent or regular sources of income but lavish lifestyle and property in millions vilified the private sector, those who take risks, earn profits, pay taxes, and create jobs. And these attacks were the result.
The economic liberalization post 1990 created opportunities even for ordinary citizens. Many businesses and enterprises emerged thereafter. In this context, Gurung’s rise is a story of Nepal’s economic transformation.
Born into a modest farming family in Khotang, Gurung left his banking job around 1980s to venture into retail business. In 1984, he sold his wife Sabitri Gurung’s wedding jewelry to open a small cold store near the Bhat-Bhateni temple in Naxal. When economic liberalization swept Nepal, his dreams found room to soar. Four decades later, that small venture has grown into a nationwide network of nearly 30 outlets, generating billions in annual turnover, serving tens of thousands of customers daily, and paying substantial taxes to the government.
The opening of the very Maharajgunj Superstore – that was reopened on Thursday – around 17 years ago marked a turning point in his life. Not only for Gurung, but also for Nepali consumers, it established new benchmarks in scale and convenience in retail. In subsequent years, Bhat-Bhateni became the backbone of urban consumption habit, a major taxpayer, and a key distribution channel for domestic producers and multinational brands.
In recent years, especially after 2007, Nepal’s economy began to drift ideologically and back tracked practically from its liberal policy, peaking after 2015. In the name of open markets and the private sector, a handful of brokers – backed by the government – captured markets, while genuine private enterprises suffered. Under the leadership of then Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, the dominance of such brokers in the name of the private sector grew so strong that negative perceptions of the private sector deepened further.
Amid rising unemployment and living costs, entrenched nepotism and patronage, and exclusion from economic gains due to intermediary capture, youth dissatisfaction with government misgovernance was intensifying. The government saw it only as opposition, failing to recognize its own distorted practice and policies. The ban imposed on social media platforms to silence the opposition was understood by youth as an attempt to suppress criticism by the political elite. In response, on September 8, youth took to the streets.
Instead of addressing grievances, the then government led by KP Sharma Oli opened fire in broad daylight, killing dozens of youths. This made it easier for infiltrators waiting for an opportunity. Thus, September 9 will forever be remembered as a day of devastation – a black day in Nepal’s history.
In that tense environment, mobs burning with resentment toward private-sector like Gurung draped themselves in the national flag and tried to push the country back by a decade.
The pretext was Gurung’s public proximity to power. He had donated land and funds for the central office of the UML party in the presence of then Prime Minister Oli, an act framed as a symbol of business-political patronage. On top of that came allegations in the Lalita Niwas land case, as if Gurung himself had forged land certificates. He bought the land and paid the tax but as laws were interpreted selectively, Gurung was jailed, while others engaged in similar dealings faced no action.
Whatever the pretext, the attack was not only on Bhat-Bhateni, it was an attack on the whole private sector. Infiltrators among protesters found Gurung an easy target. Those who had run their political shops on his support did not come to his defense. No one defended Bhat-Bhateni either, despite it employing thousands and being a top taxpayer year after year.
Today, as elections near, old and new parties ride luxury vehicles from door to door campaigning promising job creation, yet neither of them claims to protect business, nor today do their manifestos include concrete plans to safeguard industry and commerce.
The planned arson and looting of September 9 targeted the private sector broadly. Industries and businesses were reduced to ashes. Bhat-Bhateni outlets across Kathmandu and other districts burned for hours, some of them for days. There were human casualties too. Bodies were found in burned buildings, some beyond identification. The economic damage was unimaginable. Bhat-Bhateni alone suffered losses exceeding Rs 10.8 billion; overall private-sector losses surpassed Rs 200 billion. With the national economy estimated at Rs 6.17 trillion at consumer prices in the fiscal year 2081-82, the destruction amounted to nearly 4 percent of GDP, the largest destruction of private property in Nepal’s history. Consequently, the World Bank lowered its growth forecast for the current fiscal year from 5.2 percent to 2.1 percent.
The impact extended beyond retail. Suppliers, producers, and insurers were all affected, exposing weaknesses in Nepal’s risk management and insurance systems.
Yet Gurung remained steadfast. Swallowing his tears, he stood firm because thousands of young people depended on him. He did not lay a single one of nearly 10,000 employees off, even though nearly half had lost their workplaces to the flames. He continued paying salaries and festival allowances, redeploying staff to operating branches or reconstruction sites.
As Gurung says, he had no option but to rise again. He worked relentlessly. Reconstruction advanced rapidly. Within three months, the destroyed Baluwatar warehouse reopened. Starting with Koteshwor, the blue-and-yellow Bhat-Bhateni towers began rising again.
Still, Gurung remains a figure of contradiction in Nepali society. To those who know him closely, he is a simple, approachable entrepreneur and philanthropist who modernized Nepal’s retail sector and invested heavily in health and education. To the critics, he represents business power intertwined with politics. Nepal’s tendency to seek heroes in the wrong places – and to vilify the heroes – is not only Gurung’s burden; it is one carried quietly by countless Nepali entrepreneurs, who build, risk, and persevere, only to be misunderstood, doubted, or vilified by the very society they strive to serve.
At the same time, the September movement revealed a deep trust deficit between political parties and a youth generation that feels excluded from economic opportunity amid a broker-captured economy.
Despite the private sector accounting for 81.55 percent of GDP and 85.6 percent of job creation, continued attacks in recent years have made little difference whether a government exists or not.
Thus, for Gurung and Nepal’s business community, the September uprising delivered a clear message: in a politically semi-conscious society, commercial success alone is not enough. Transparency, political equidistance, and meaningful engagement with youth aspirations are decisive for enterprise survival.
And as elections approach, despite tall promises, no party has yet clearly committed – when will be in government – to ensuring the security of entrepreneurial investment or preventing such devastation from recurring.
So, as the poster in Bhat-Bhateni’s rebuilt buildings reads, “one can only pray: O God, may this never happen again in my country, Nepal.”
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