“Sometimes, jokingly, I would call myself the first businessman of Nizhny Novgorod,” says Oleg Kondrashov, former City Manager of Nizhny Novgorod – one of Russia’s largest cities. And as the saying goes, every joke has a grain of truth.
Oleg Kondrashov began his entrepreneurial journey in 1989, at a time when the very word “entrepreneur” was only just entering the vocabulary of Soviet citizens.
“After completing my military service in 1988, I returned to university as a sophomore at the Polytechnic Institute. As a 21-year-old adult, it felt wrong to ask my parents for money, so I decided to earn it myself. Once, during a student trip to Brest, my friends and I bought souvenirs and gifts, which we later sold in Nizhny – mostly in student dorms. That’s how I made my first profit. Next time, we took much bigger bags,” Oleg Kondrashov recalled in an interview.
His early earnings allowed him to open the first commercial kiosk on Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street – the city’s main pedestrian avenue. The kiosk, named “Kristina,” became the first in Nizhny Novgorod to operate 24/7. Later, the brand grew into a retail network with 56 locations, including “Solos” and “Biblos” stores and a sporting goods shop called “Arena.”
After stabilizing his business in Nizhny Novgorod, Oleg Kondrashov moved to Moscow at the request of friends and business partners to streamline operations in their multi-industry enterprises: retail, gas stations, transportation companies. He started as a hired manager but gradually became a co-owner in several business ventures.
One of the most successful projects was “Caesar”, a chain of fashion boutiques. The first store opened in 1993 at the Radisson Slavyanskaya Hotel in Moscow. By the early 2000s, the network had grown to 24 boutiques across Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Nizhny Novgorod. However, as the fashion and athletic wear markets evolved and multibrand shopping formats became dominant, the partners made a strategic decision – proposed by Oleg Kondrashov – to scale down to five flagship locations.
These entrepreneurial experiences reinforced what Oleg Kondrashov excelled at most: strategic business planning.
“Entrepreneurs of the old school treat their businesses like their children. They grow them and then cannot let go. Understandable, but wrong. An entrepreneur should build a business that can be sold at a profit – otherwise growth stops,” he often emphasized.
He also understood early on that small businesses cannot survive in isolation. Entrepreneurs must unite to defend their rights. That is why, in 1999, he founded the Business Perspective Foundation, and soon after became one of the co-founders of Opora Rossii, the national organization for small and medium-sized businesses. He served as Vice President responsible for regional development.
From this perspective, his return to Nizhny Novgorod was a logical step. Even before the Caesar project concluded, Oleg Kondrashov had begun developing another venture – a network of restaurants.
Despite advice that “all the money is in Moscow,” Oleg Kondrashov believed that the regions had enormous potential.
“I’m grateful I didn’t ‘put all my eggs in one basket,’ as my Moscow partners suggested. I refused to abandon my Nizhny projects. Things shouldn’t be good only in Moscow while the regions lag behind. I bet on Nizhny Novgorod – and I was right.”
The regional restaurant market was just beginning to emerge. In 1997, together with friends who later formed the PIR Group, Oleg Kondrashov opened his first restaurant, “Sport Bar,” as he said, “for myself, my friends, athletes, and fans” – in other words, for pleasure.
The success of the next restaurant, “Pirozhka u Gansa,” confirmed that the direction was right. The PIR Group eventually opened more than 20 restaurants, known for quality menus at accessible prices. Many guests were small and medium-sized business owners – potential colleagues and partners of Oleg Kondrashov.
“I’m accountable first and foremost to my partners. Honesty and transparency in business relationships are even more important than friendship. Friends may forgive something, but financial matters require clarity. I must always explain my decisions,” he told Kommersant Publishing House.
These business principles helped him succeed even at a large corporate level.
In late 2009, Oleg Kondrashov was elected Chairman of the Board of Nizhny Novgorod Sales Company (NSC), the region’s largest energy supplier, controlling nearly 60% of the electricity market and serving 27,000 legal entities and over 1.3 million households.
After just one year in the role, he was awarded “Person of the Year” in the Nizhny Novgorod region – partly due to policies that improved conditions for small and medium-sized businesses.
Oleg Kondrashov consistently championed entrepreneurship – while leading companies, serving as a member of the Nizhny Novgorod City Duma (2005–2010), and later as City Manager (2010–2015).
The scale of challenges he faced is reflected in statistics:
By 2005, the region had over 100,000 small businesses employing more than 450,000 people – 7% of the population – producing about 20% of all goods and services, and contributing 13% of total tax revenues.
After the 2008 economic crisis, entrepreneurs were hit especially hard. According to Kondrashov’s estimates as Vice President of Opora Rossii, only one in five entrepreneurs even knew about available government support programs – and merely one in twenty could access them.
He stressed that many regional governments were reluctant to allocate support funds, even though doing so could unlock federal co-financing and ease the financial burden on small businesses.
Kondrashov advocated for “hands-on crisis management” at the local level, with quick, decisive action. As City Manager, he instituted regular meetings with small business representatives.
“People come to such meetings with urgent problems, but there are thousands of business owners in the city who are satisfied with how the administration works. We must rethink how to build a truly productive, mutually beneficial dialogue,” he said.