Mr. Harshad Patel (Broadening Narratives)

Description

Harshad “Harshad ji” Patel, 64, is a Chicago-area small-business owner and active temple board member. Guided by a family ethic of care and generosity, he offers a pragmatic story that centers around on work, mutual aid, and resilience in U.S., a place for opportunity, independence, and responsibility. Raised in a farming household supplying milk to Amul, he helped with dairy, crops, and family enterprises from childhood. After vocational training in printing and an early printing shop partnership, he first visited the U.S. in the mid-1980s and settled in 1987. Following a short-lived liquor/convenience partnership, he opened his own convenience store (1991) and then founded Shital Groceries (1997), purchasing the building in 2006. Patel describes bootstrapping capital through personal loans, frequent experiences of being taken advantage of in partnerships, and eventually mentoring/financing others. A long-time devotee of the Swaminarayan tradition, he serves on a local temple board and continues family traditions of charitable support for marriages and household setup in Gujarat. He and his wife raised two sons in the Chicago area (one an IT professional in Colorado, one a high-school principal). In recent years he has explored nature-based diabetes management and hopes to expand charitable work and cow-care initiatives.