When Dipa Bhattarai first started threading eyebrows, it wasn’t because she wanted to change state law or start a chain of salons. It was something she had grown up with in Nepal and that she could do to make some money during college.

“For me, it was part of growing up, but over here, I saw that it could be an opportunity. Because I was in Mississippi, there weren’t many people doing it,” Bhattarai said.

Bhattarai first came to America in 2013, pursuing a bachelor’s degree at Mississippi University for Women on a student visa. There, Bhattarai started charging dorm mates for threading – a method of grooming eyebrows by trapping hairs with a cotton thread and removing them. The procedure is popular in Southeast Asia.

Because of Bhattarai’s visa status, she couldn’t open her own business immediately. But she had a friend who opened a salon she could run in 2015. She also found other girls with eyebrow threading experience to provide services.

Three years later, Bhattarai opened another salon in Starkville, realizing that owning eyebrow threading salons could be a path toward building passive income if she had enough locations. But there was an issue she never saw coming – licensure.

The Mississippi Board of Cosmetology required practitioners to hold a license. The training for licensure would require hundreds of hours of learning other skills that did not apply to her business at all. And then, with little warning, the board shut down both of her salons in 2018 within a few days of each other.

“My whole life came crashing down,” she said.

One day, as Bhattarai was scrolling on Facebook, she came across Aaron Rice, the director for the Mississippi Justice Institute. After hearing Bhattarai’s story, Rice took up her case pro-bono and filed a lawsuit against the state board in 2019.

Rice also brought the case to the attention of state legislators. At the same time, similar lawsuits were being filed for other non-invasive cosmetic services, adding pressure on lawmakers to change the law during the 2021 session.

House Bill 1312 swept through the legislature, exempting services like lash extensions, makeup, and eyebrow threading from esthetician license requirements. Bhattarai said the change was thanks to all those who supported her, along with the American legal system. As many hurdles as the government placed on her with her immigration status, Bhattarai felt she also received an equal amount of help overcoming them.

“While the American system was hurting me in this, America also had the system that was protecting people like me with people like Mr. Aaron,” she said.

After Bhattarai finished her master’s program in 2021, she opened a new salon in Columbus – Deeva Brows and Beauty. Due to her visa requirements, she balanced that with another full-time job as a business counselor at the Mississippi Small Business Development Center.

By 2022, Bhattarai’s second location was open in the Tupelo Mall at Barnes Crossing. Then, in 2024, she opened a kiosk in the mall in Gulfport. With three locations, she was eligible for a deal in April 2024 to open salons in any Walmart store.

Since then, she has opened four Deeva Brows and Lashes salons within Walmarts in Starkville, Columbus, Oxford and Olive Branch. She also maintains her location in the Tupelo mall.

Still, Bhattarai has dreams of doing more. Three more Walmart-based salons are slated to open this year, including Meridian, Gulfport and Biloxi. Her goal is to open 11 locations by 2026.

But she doesn’t have plans to stop with Mississippi.

“There have been 14 states already that (have) deregulated threading…” Bhattarai said. “Why are we waiting for every state to do it individually? Why are we not federally deregulating it?”

Since starting and expanding her business, Bhattarai’s visa status has also changed. She received an EB-1A visa – a green card for foreign nationals who have extraordinary abilities in the science, arts, education, business or athletics.

“I don’t know how I got EB-1A as someone who just was doing threading in Columbus, Mississippi, you know,” Bhattarai said. “... I’m not a Nobel prize winner, but a Nobel prize winner would have the same category of green card as I have. … There are not many people who have got it, but it all happened because of this business.”

STORY BY ABIGAIL SIPE ROCHESTER

PHOTOS BY RORY DOYLE