We checked into a Best Western in Kendallville, Indiana, and the very friendly man who checked us in volunteered that he is the owner of the hotel. I didn’t know that many chain hotels are individually owned franchises. As he started telling me more about his journey to the hotel business, I became very interested in his story.
Dev and his wife Meera are from the state of Gujarat in India. Dev convinced his parents to let him date Meera, even though arranged marriages were the norm at the time. In 1991, Dev sought to attend graduate school in the U.S., and a family friend who was living in the U.S. agreed to sponsor him. When he got his visa, Dev called Meera and told her that he wanted to marry her before he left so that it would be easier for her to get a visa when she finished her studies and was ready to join him. They married fifteen days later, and four days after that, Dev left for the University of South Florida, where he began his studies for (and later earned) his master’s degree in electrical engineering. Unfortunately, Meera had problems getting a visa, and she wasn’t able to come to the U.S. for another year and a half. It took the help of a Congressman and a Senator to get her visa application approved.
The couple ended up in San Jose, California, where Dev worked in software engineering. They have two kids who were born there, both of whom are currently attending Cornell University. Their daughter will be a senior in the fall and is in New York for a summer internship with Morgan Stanley, and their son, who will be a sophomore, hasn’t decided on a career path yet.
Dev and Meera eventually decided that they wanted to own their own business. The couple decided on a hotel franchise because they knew so many other people who were doing it (there are about 23,000 hotel/motel owners in the U.S. who are from the Indian state of Gujarat), and they liked the idea of starting a business where they would have a lot of support and ideas from friends. They moved from San Jose to Fort Worth, Indiana in 2009 and have operated their hotel in Kendallville ever since. Dev said that they’ve been able to get help from their network of hotel owners with every aspect of the business, from what is the best credit card processing software to which carpet cleaner is the most effective.
I asked Dev whether he misses anything from his days living in India. He said that he misses being in social situations with family or friends where he can speak Gujarati, his native language. When he tries to tell a joke in English, it doesn’t always come out the way he wants. He also misses some aspects of Indian culture.
When asked what he does NOT miss about India, Dev was quick to say that it is difficult to get a job because (1) there are 1.3 billion people there, so competition for jobs is intense, and (2) there is favoritism and prejudice associated with a person’s caste and state of origin that can affect a person’s ability to get a job. He loves the U.S. for the freedom to be able to study hard and get a job as a result of your hard work.
Because we’re trying to find out what people around the country are thinking about the current political situation, I asked Dev if he was feeling positive or negative about the direction the country is heading. He said that he is a capitalist like Trump, but that Trump has crossed over the line in the way he treats people and doesn’t care whether his actions are ethical or not. Dev is sad that people have become so polarized.
Roger mentioned in a recent blog post that he has found the people we have met across the country to be proud and kindly. Dev is a perfect example of both, from the pride he takes in his accomplishments and his work to the kind way he treats his customers.