SUVA, Saturday June 28 2003 : He had to walk miles to school
and study by lamplight. But today Indo-Fijian Mahendra Motibhai Patel,
63, drives a Mercedes Benz and is the CEO of a business group whose
turnover is over Fiji $50 million
The Motibhai group, which was started in 1929 by his father Motibhai
and uncles Parshottam Das and Prabhu Das as a small rural grocery shop,
has expanded into a business that has over 700 employees and dominates
many areas of wholesale and retail trade in Fiji.The brothers, originally
from Vadodara in Gujarat, went to Fiji and settled in a remote village
near the town of Ba in the western part of the main island of Viti Levu.
Mahendra Patel -- "everyone calls me Mack" -- takes up the
story from there."My father came here in 1929 and worked for another
Gujarati businessman for 30 pounds a year. After two years he asked
for a raise, which was refused.
"So he quit and started his own business. His total capital was
60 pounds. He invested 30 in a building and 30 in goods for the store."The
store was in a remote rural area with no electricity and no roads. Goods
were hauled in by steam train to the nearest rail depot and from there
were transported on horseback.Today as you walk into the arrivals hall
at Nadi International Airport in Fiji, what catches the eye is a large
attractive duty-free shop that stocks practically every international
luxury goods brand you can think of.The shop, appropriately called PROUD's,
is the brainchild of Mack Patel.
"The key to our success is customer satisfaction," he says.
This, together with a highly motivated staff and an educated sales team,
adds up to corporate profits.Like many other Gujarati businessmen of
his generation in Fiji, Patel did not have much time for a higher education.
"I grew up in the school of hard knocks," he laughs. But he
has educated himself through wide reading and extensive travel.He can
quote extensively from the world's great thinkers and is familiar with
the philosophies of the business greats like Henry Ford and Hernando
de Soto, a famous Peruvian economist."Motibhai's has evolved over
the past 75 years and today our management, corporate confidence and
financial stability have enabled us to be associated with over 100 international
companies, such as Unilever, Kraft, Sony, Canon and Seiko," he
states.
"And all this did not happen because I am a Gujarati - that is
naïve," he asserts firmly."It happened because we have
changed with changing times and have over the years adapted to new ways
of doing business." In keeping with this philosophy, he has just
started the construction of a $30 million office tower in Suva, which
could turn out to be the tallest building in the capital.
It is not always easy to do business in a relatively remote and small
country, whose people are known more for their friendliness than their
business efficiency, and where the cautious investor is always wary
of the possibility of another coup."What our country needs and
what our leaders should focus on is creating business opportunities
that bring steady cash into the hands of the vast majority of our people,
" he says. And to him the easiest way to do that is to harness
Fiji's rich soil, salubrious climate and abundant water supply to increase
its agricultural production.
Though he and his business are firmly rooted in Fiji, Patel is also
proud of his family's roots in Gujarat. He has built a high school in
Nodhana, his ancestral village near Vadodara, and his old family home
has now been turned into a kindergarten.The Motibhai Group will be 100
years old in 2031. "With god's grace, I plan to be around,"
he says.