The business story
Born in 1963 in Lamjung, Nepal. Earned a Master of Civil Engineering in the USSR (Kharkiv, ~1979–1986) and worked as a highway engineer in Nepal before relocating to Melbourne in 1990; added an MBA from Victoria University (1994). Co-founded the MIT Group, anchored by the Melbourne Institute of Technology, with his wife Jamuna Gurung; later expanded into real estate. Former president of the NRNA. Joint net worth ~A$900M (2023), peaking ~A$1.18B in 2019.
Ghale's career shows a consistent pattern: build human capital first, then put it to work where institutions can support it.
Early life and background
Shesh Ghale was born in 1963 in Lamjung, a hill district of Nepal well away from the trading networks of the Kathmandu Valley. There was no family firm in his background. His route upward ran through education and, eventually, migration.
Like many students from developing countries during the Cold War, he took up the Soviet Union's offer of study abroad. Between roughly 1979 and 1986 he completed a Master of Civil Engineering at the Kharkiv National Automobile and Highway University, in present-day Ukraine. He then went home and worked as a highway engineer, the sort of skilled role a road-poor country most wants to retain.
In 1990 he moved to Melbourne. There he added a business qualification to his engineering training, completing an MBA at Victoria University in 1994. He arrived in Australia as a migrant with credentials rather than capital, which makes what followed a more purely entrepreneurial story than most.
Building the MIT Group
With his wife, Jamuna Gurung, Ghale co-founded the Melbourne Institute of Technology, which became the anchor of the MIT Group. The business grew alongside a major regional trend: Australia's rise as a leading destination for fee-paying international students, including a growing number from Nepal.
Private colleges like MIT fill a specific niche. They offer accredited diplomas and degrees, often designed as pathways into the larger public universities, to international students who pay full fees. With campus and faculty costs largely fixed, profits rise and fall sharply with enrolment.
From that education base, the group moved into real estate, including hotels and apartments. By the late 2010s, Ghale and Gurung appeared on Australian rich lists, with a joint net worth that peaked at about A$1.18 billion in 2019 and was assessed at around A$900 million in 2023.
