“I learned my business skills in the fruit shop,” says Patel, who was the second sibling of seven and lived in the “joint” family with her uncle, aunt, and mum and dad in the days when Herne Bay was far from the wealthy community it is now.
“Those were the days of pound, shillings and pence and pounds and ounces, no calculators. So you, you worked out your money very quickly. And those were the days, when in the fruit shops, no one touched any produce. You put the produce in the bag for the customer, they would say a pound of this, you would give that. So giving the customer good service [was crucial]. Because if you put a bad peach in and they’ve paid good money for it, they’re going to come back very quickly.”
“So, respecting the customer was the first business lesson,” Patel says.
“I dealt with money, but I never thought about money at that stage. The only thing I felt probably a bit deprived about, was we couldn’t have frozen vegetables or tinned fruit. We always had to have fresh everything.”
Patel studied industrial chemistry in Auckland before heading to India where she met and married her husband Kantilal, who had qualified as a doctor.
They have now been married for 50 years.
When they returned to New Zealand with hopes of setting up a GP clinic they encountered numerous barriers from the conservative health system.
It took 18 months for Kantilal to even get his qualifications recognised in New Zealand. Getting a loan to purchase their first GP practice in Otara was also a challenge.
“Our biggest barriers were the bureaucracy,” Patel says. “We did things differently, we were looked upon suspiciously. So the DHB on several occasions, said, we’re not going to pay you for that anymore. You have to do it our way, which was the colonial, white, middle-class way of doing things, which wasn’t working for our patients.
“Output is one thing, but outcomes are more important,” Patel says.
But once they were up and running the practice grew rapidly.
“That is the outcome you will get, respecting everyone’s culture. Everyone has their own nuances and you can be a European person with your own culture. It’s not that you all fit into one box. A new migrant is very different from me.
“I’m an entrepreneur because I use common sense,” Patel says,
Since selling the majority of Tāmaki Health the couple now focus on their charity work. They even built a Hindu temple for the community in Papatoetoe.
Does Hinduism affect her outlook on money?
“You could say it’s a cultural aspect, I think, but it’s not religion necessarily,” Patel says. “The more you give back to community, the more you will be rewarded. I think it’s a philosophy of ‘give and it will come to you’.”
- Gandhi Nivas has helped more than 5,500 families in TāmakiMakaurau. Nearly 60 per cent of men who have been through the Gandhi Nivas programme have been prevented from reoffending. https://www.gandhinivas.nz/
Money Talks is a podcast run by the NZ Herald. It isn’t about personal finance and isn’t about economics - it’s just well-known New Zealanders talking about money and sharing some stories about the impact it’s had on their lives and how it has shaped them.
Money Talks is available on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Liam Dann is business editor-at-large for the New Zealand Herald. He is a senior writer and columnist, and also presents and produces videos and podcasts. He joined the Herald in 2003.
