The power of perseveranc.., p.6
The Power of Perseverance, page 6
Usha Patel: ‘I was afraid of him choking on his own vomit. That’s how bad he was. I couldn’t lift him up. My sister Ragini had to help me roll him onto his side. I was more concerned about my mum and dad getting worried, thinking, Who the hell has our daughter married?’
Ragini Shah: ‘I first met Mahesh when he came to the UK after Usha and he were married. I particularly remember his sense of humour. He was a very driven and focused individual who knew what he wanted from life. He was very funny; a fun-loving, family-oriented person who was always up for a good laugh. He was also always very disciplined and organized.’
In July 1989, Usha Patel became pregnant for the first time. As well as making allowances for leave coverage at their respective pharmacies, the happy couple had to decide where their new child would be born.
Mahesh Patel: ‘Usha wanted to go to London for the birth of Nikhil, because her mum was there. I also gave Usha the option to go to Cairns in Australia. She said, “I have no family there. I will be by myself. I’d rather go to where Mum is.” It was a long haul to go to London in those days. It wasn’t that comfortable for her, being heavily pregnant.’
Mahesh and Usha were blessed with two sons. Nikhil Patel arrived in April 1990 and Ajay Patel in January 1992, both born in London. Usha travelled back to the UK by herself weeks in advance. Mahesh arrived in London just in time before Nikhil was born.
For Ajay’s birth, Usha again travelled back to London, but also had Nikhil with her this time. But when their second son arrived, for the first time since they were married, Mahesh was not where his wife had expected him to be.
Mahesh Patel: ‘When Nikhil was born, I arrived just in time. Then, when Ajay was born, I missed it. I messed up my flight. He was earlier than expected. Then Usha had to stay the minimum time to get the vaccination jabs for them, it was six to eight weeks. She brought Nikhil back to PNG by herself on the plane. When Ajay was born—and she still reminds me—she brought both of the boys back by herself. That was tough going for her.’
Usha Patel: ‘I don’t know how, but when I was carrying Ajay, I managed to go to London by myself on that thirty-hour flight with Nikhil. Then I brought the boys back home by myself. On the plane, Nikhil had one seat, and I was holding the bassinet with Ajay. Whenever I see an upset baby on a plane now, I always say a quiet prayer for the baby and the mum. I send them healing energies, because I think, I’ve been there and I know what that feels like.’
It may not have registered with Usha at the time, but this pattern of Mahesh’s other commitments taking precedence over important family events would become a major problem the family of four would have to deal with.
Usha Patel: ‘Mahesh missed Ajay’s birth. He was at the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens and he didn’t believe me when I told him it was time. When he did arrive, he stayed for two weeks and then went back to Port Moresby. I stayed in London to wait for Ajay’s vaccinations. I probably did think, bloody Mahesh, at the time. I was really frustrated more than anything. Luckily my family were there to help me.’
Mahesh Patel: ‘The overall feeling about becoming a father was one of delight. When we got married, I always wanted kids. My vision was to kick the ball around in the park with them. That was always the intention. If I look back, I missed out on that opportunity with my dad. We were always going in and out of school and then travelling to New Zealand, so I had no time with him. My goals at twenty-five or twenty-six were to get married, have children and live happily ever after.’
Usha Patel: ‘I felt a huge responsibility being a parent. I felt in the dark. You are just trying to do what your parents did for you. We do learn that sense of duty from our parents.’
A further complication for Usha was that Nikhil was born with a defect in his right leg, something that would impact the entire family in the years to come.
Usha Patel: ‘Nikhil was born with some of his toes touching his knee. His leg was bent at the ankle, which had affected his growth plate [a cartilaginous area responsible for new bone growth in children]. My sister Yamini, who lives in America, arranged for Nikhil to be seen by an orthopaedic surgeon. We went regularly to refit special moulds that would help bring his foot down, and to learn the physiotherapy techniques that I kept up in PNG. He would need some serious operations as he got older.’
By the beginning of 1992, there were four City Pharmacy stores in the business. The first was in Garden City, Boroko, and the second a ten minutes’ drive away, inside the then Steamships flagship department store in downtown Port Moresby. A third and fourth store were then opened inside the Burns Philp store in Boroko and in Anderson’s Foodland in Koki.
With much hard work from both Mahesh and Usha, and through the guidance of Alan Jarvis’s business expertise, the City Pharmacy chain was flourishing and ready for further expansion.
Usha Patel: ‘Initially, there was no bigger business vision for me. I thought we’d just be in Port Moresby with our four stores and we’d be quite happy. Mahesh obviously had bigger plans. Or at least they evolved over time, bit by bit, where he could enlarge it to his vision.’
Greg Wisbey: ‘That concept of Steamships pharmacies in the stores and the way Mahesh carried that forward and arranged the contracts with Steamships was really clever. Because of the local security situation, it was a bit of an issue sometimes for people to go shopping. Your wife doesn’t necessarily want to make a trip just to visit a pharmacy when she can park securely at Steamships, go inside and find everything under one roof. So, when Mahesh got Alan Jarvis with him, it was a perfect storm. Because with those two, you had Alan’s skillset and his financial know-how and then the vision, passion, work ethic and everything else that Mahesh brought. That’s why it worked.’
Robyn Jarvis: ‘My husband, Alan, and Mahesh were an impressive two-act team. Never a contract between them, not one piece of paper. Mahesh sometimes looked bored in board meetings, but Alan was pedantic with the routine of business. I sympathized with Mahesh as we, also, were subjected to the formal way of doing things. Mahesh may not agree, but the impression was that Alan was the wise, old man and Mahesh, always on a plane, the explorer and reporter.’
Mahesh Patel and Alan Jarvis ambitiously moved beyond Port Moresby and, in 1992, opened five new City Pharmacy stores in regional Papua New Guinea.
Mahesh Patel: ‘They were all in different provinces: Lae, Madang, Mount Hagen, Goroka and Manus Island. That was no mean task. At that time, we employed Neville Barrett, who was an integral part of this roll-out. I said, “We are going to build these new stores. We need one finished each month in five locations.”’
Neville Barrett: ‘I moved from New Zealand to work in Sydney and I hated it. I then found a little advert in the newspaper. They were looking for a retail guy in Papua New Guinea. I didn’t even know where Papua New Guinea was. I was interviewed by Alan Jarvis. I spoke to Mahesh on the phone before flying up. We were told by others there were crocodiles going down the main street in Port Moresby and you would get malaria. Mahesh said it was not true. He said, “It’s a city, don’t worry about it.” Well, he lied to me. I got to Papua New Guinea, and there was this little building which was basically the airport. Some people were hanging off the barbed-wire fence around the hut, looking at me. You get off the plane and it is just so hot and I’m thinking, My God, what have I done?’
Usha Patel: ‘Neville is a real character and a lovely guy. Those were the good old days. That time for me was special. Neville was a good guy, and good for the company as well. People loved him. He is the sort of person you want to have in your business.’
Robyn Jarvis: ‘Not long after Alan and Mahesh settled into their partnership, I was astounded at the fast pace of growth. Eventually, twenty-seven pharmacies opened, creeping offshore into the islands further afield, and, at one point, there was even an ambition to take over a pharmacy chain in Australia. After a lifetime of construction, it became clear that the future in PNG lay in letting Mahesh go for it, and Alan closed down the PNG arm of Bodiam Constructions.’
Neville Barrett: ‘Mahesh would say I helped with the growth of the business and I probably did to a degree. To be fair, Mahesh was the driving influence. There was me at the front, there was Mahesh in the middle and there was Bob Patel out the back, running the distribution centre. We just improved little things. I brought some influences out from Australia. I had a retail background. We improved the look of the stores. We had a direction, but Mahesh drove it. He said, “This is where I want to be,” and we had to interpret that. Between the three of us, we pulled it off rather well.’
Mahesh Patel and Neville Barrett had an unforgettable return to Port Moresby after one of their regional trips in 1993.
Neville Barrett: ‘We went to Lae to visit a pharmacy there. Store visits by Mahesh were not good for the likes of me, because he would see something wrong at 1,000 metres. The team and I worked hard on this store to make it really good but it wasn’t. It looked the part, but there were fundamental things wrong with it. Mahesh was not happy! We got off the plane in Port Moresby and it was raining. He got held up at gun point and they stole his car. What else could go wrong?’
Mahesh Patel: ‘It was at the old domestic airport in Port Moresby. When we went for short trips to regional areas, we left our cars in the carpark. We returned after a trip and, as I got in my car, the central locking opened all the doors. One guy jumped into the front passenger seat and pointed a gun at me, while others jumped into the back seat. I was ordered to get out of the car, which I did quickly, and they drove off. I hurriedly looked for Neville, who had gone to his car, a ute [utility coupe], and without thinking, directed him to follow the guys who had taken my car. We sped off and caught up with them and they turned into a side road. They then turned around and began coming at us! We got scared and drove into the nearest police station yard. The stupidity was that because we had a ute, we thought we could ram into my sedan they had stolen, forgetting they had a gun. It was really a foolish move on my part.’
Prior to their regional expansion, a large fire destroyed one of the four City Pharmacy stores.
Neville Barrett: ‘Our main store with the biggest turnover burnt to the ground at Boroko. Everyone is running around saying, “This is bad, this is bad.” I’ll never forget, I said to Mahesh, “We’ve got a warehouse full of stock, let’s get trestle tables. We’ll go outside the burnt area and have a fire sale.” It was a major success. We were doing just as good a turnover selling goods off trestle tables. Mahesh loved it. He said, “That’s bloody brilliant.” We got all these flyers made: Fire Sale! We had vans pouring in from the warehouse with stock to keep up. We had to keep the turnover going. We had bills to pay.’
Mahesh Patel: ‘It was all very straightforward with the insurance claim. We didn’t own the building. We just lost the stock inside, which insurance paid for quickly. We had a little pharmacy inside the Burns Philip supermarket. But it was our store with the biggest turnover, so as far as the whole business went, it was critical at that point in time. We were in that growth phase. We didn’t have that big warehouse and company infrastructure then. Yes, we did sell stock on trestle tables immediately afterward, and we had a laugh about that.’
Neville Barrett: ‘What is Mahesh like working under pressure? You can see a certain amount of concern. There is absolutely no stress whatsoever. Then you can see the cogs in his brain working out how we are going to get out of this.’
The first evidence of Mahesh Patel’s community spirit and willingness to give back on a large scale became apparent to those around him very early as he created City Pharmacy Limited (CPL) in Port Moresby.
Mahesh Patel: ‘From 1989 to 1994, I was chairman of the Red Cross fundraising committee. I just got asked. The Red Cross need continual fundraising, and their biggest programme was the Miss Papua New Guinea talent contest. We were just starting our business, and we sponsored a girl one year. We thought it was a good idea to market our company.
‘Then the committee, which was full of ladies who had been doing it for years and years, said, “Why don’t you join the committee?” I said, “Okay. I’m sure there are a lot of improvements we can make.” When I came in for my first meeting, they said, “We want you to be Chairman. You can be the neutral guy.” The Miss PNG contest was the biggest single fundraiser for the Red Cross and extremely high profile.’
Mahesh Patel: ‘We had the first live television broadcast for the Miss Papua New Guinea talent contest. There is always this suspicion about fundraising, so the first thing I did as Chair was approach one of the big four accounting firms and ask them to audit our books. I needed to show transparency. At Red Cross, the funds are limited, so I used to get my head of finance go there every Monday for half a day to check the books. Then, I could confidently go and tap on the doors of CEOs and ask, “Will you donate funds, will you sponsor a girl?” Eventually, after five years, I dropped off the Committee because it required a lot of time commitment.’
Mahesh Patel further extended his community service to include working on the team for the Pacific Games. It is similar in format to the Commonwealth Games, but restricted to South Pacific nations.
Mahesh Patel: ‘The first Pacific Games I was involved in was in 1991 when Papua New Guinea hosted them. The government had asked for volunteers. The protocol side of things for the official guests was being coordinated by my friends Monica Harris and her husband Dr Bruce Harris—lovely couple, Americans. I knew Bruce through softball. He said, “Why don’t you volunteer?” So, I turned up and asked, “What do I need to do?” They said, “You are in charge of the Protocol Committee.” I asked, “What does that mean?” The Chair replied, “The Department of Foreign Affairs will come and teach you.” What it meant was that I would be liaising with every dignitary who arrived, and then I had to coordinate all the medal presentations. Oh, and he adds, “You need to find 150 or so volunteers.” I had this role for six months, and I did not go into my work office. I used to get home at two or three in the morning. Bob Patel, a close family friend of ours moved from Fiji to help with the running of the business.’
In the early 1990s as the City Pharmacy business grew, Mahesh Patel was the company CEO and Alan Jarvis the chairman. Mahesh and others have strong memories about those early days when it was smaller and more personal.
Mahesh Patel: ‘When we were growing our business and had about sixty or eighty staff, every Christmas, Usha and I used to write individual gift cards and wrap gifts. For all of them. We would bring home all the Christmas cards and wrapping paper, write and fold. In the card would be a cash bonus and we would give them either a box of chocolates or a Christmas cake. I was reading an article about the importance of not losing touch with the people you are working with. In the digital world, people are forgetting about the human touch. That’s when I thought, Wow, we used to do that. But when you become bigger, you cannot do it. We give them cash bonuses and gifts now, but it is not the same as a handwritten Christmas card and gift. It also came up in our market research within our own staff—their biggest want was about them getting recognition. It’s not all about money. It’s also about being acknowledged. So, we started a staff recognition programme.’
Tracey Gotele: ‘I started working for CPL at Boroko in 1990, when there were four CPL stores. I started as a cashier and then went on to serving customers. That was my first ever job, and I loved my work as a cashier. Then, I learned about the products. To do customer service in the store, you have to learn about the products, so I began to equip myself with knowledge about those items and customer service. When Mahesh was CEO, we would go to him with our requests, and he was always so accommodating. He would just say, “Approved, done”. And the problem would be solved there and then.’
The expansion of the City Pharmacy business and the increased financial returns allowed Mahesh and Usha Patel to reassess their long-term future and realize a goal Mahesh had set for himself years earlier.
‘The vision was always to work your butt off for ten years,’ he explains, ‘and then make it big enough so you can actually get away and do your own thing.’
In December 1994, the family moved to Sydney, Australia, for their children’s education, while maintaining a home in Port Moresby.
Chapter 7
Australia
Mahesh and Usha Patel and their two young sons, Nikhil and Ajay, moved from Port Moresby to Sydney, Australia, in December 1994. There were two primary reasons for the move. The Patel’s wanted to ensure their sons had the best possible schooling, while ensuring Nikhil’s medical treatment was a priority. Mahesh’s business partner Alan Jarvis influenced their decision to choose Sydney—it was where he also resided with his family. Alan’s wife Robyn Jarvis helped them find a home to purchase.
Mahesh Patel: ‘I’ve seen a lot of expatriates living in PNG going troppo [an Aussie term for going a bit crazy because of the tropical heat and humidity]—you start going to the pubs too often and drinking too much beer; you have a different lifestyle. I didn’t want to do that. Also, I wanted the kids to have an education at the highest level.
‘If I had the chance again, I would have kept them there in Port Moresby for a few more years. But my business partner Alan, who lived in Sydney, influenced us. That’s how we ended up in Sydney at the end of 1994, when the kids were ready for school. Alan said Sydney was the best place to live. In hindsight, both Usha and I think maybe Brisbane might have been better, because of the closer proximity to Papua New Guinea and the warmer climate. We had been to Sydney before, but never had thought about living here.’
