Radhesh Pandit is one of the most versatile entrepreneurs among Nepali Americans. He has built, developed, and owned fifteen businesses, including the first international grocery store in the Quad Cities, several convenience stores, an American restaurant, and laundromats. Pandit was also the first Nepali to open a franchised Great Clips Salon. He owns and manages four commercial plazas with over two hundred thousand square feet of class-A commercial retail space. In these plazas, he has forty local and national businesses operating, including a CVS Pharmacy.
Born on July 12, 1971, Pandit was raised in a middle-class family in the village of Ratnapura, Tanahun, in Nepal. He completed his high school education at Someshwar Secondary High School in Madi, Chitwan, Nepal. After his high school education, Pandit began studying at Birendra Multiple Campus in Chitwan. Amidst his post-secondary education, he moved to the US in 1992 to further pursue his education.
Once in the US, Pandit attended Strayer University in Washington, DC, and Shaw Business School in Toronto, Canada. After graduating, he worked as a system engineer with IBM for five years.
He began his business career by purchasing his first small grocery store in Toronto in 2001 with a partner. Pandit realized the business was his calling, resigned from his well-paid professional position at IBM, and sold the small grocery store.
From there, Pandit and his family moved to Dallas, Texas, in 2004, where he was able to purchase a struggling restaurant and gas station business. Before his purchase, this fourteen-employee business had lost 150,000 dollars per year for the last three years, but Pandit transformed the industry and made it profitable during the first year he owned it.
In 2007 he moved to Bettendorf, Iowa, in search of more opportunities. He then started his private-label, large dollar-store supermarket in 2007. Pandit opened two more dollar stores in the following two years at various locations. He purchased two more gas stations, one closed and the other struggling, making them both profitable in a couple of years.
Currently, Pandit is developing his housing subdivision. He is now building his twelfth house, and he is on track to build twenty single-family homes and townhomes in the next couple of years in. Pandit has made history in the United States as the first Nepali to have a street—Pandit Drive—named after him in Bettendorf, Iowa. He is also working on building an eighty-nine-room hotel in West Texas and an eighty-room hotel in North Carolina with his all-Nepali investor group. These hotels are scheduled to open in 2019 and 2020.
Despite a very active business lifestyle, Pandit has also contributed to the social sector. He was vice president of the Nepalese Association in Canada (NAC) in 2000 and was elected president in 2002. He coordinated a project to build the first Nepali Hindu temple and community center in Toronto, Canada. He played an instrumental role in raising almost $100,000 for the earthquake victims of Nepal in 2015. He also worked as an executive member of the Association of Nepalese in Midwest America (ANMA).
His family has established six trusts for scholarships in different parts of Nepal, where merit-based financial assistance is given to at least ten students each year. He gives all the credit for his success to his wife, Shila, his two daughters, and other extended family members who always support him through his endeavors.
Radhesh Pandit: An Inspiring Entrepreneur from Iowa.
