The Birth of the “Patel Motel” Phenomenon
In 1942, Kanji Manchhu Desai, an undocumented farmworker from Surat, Gujarat, leased a 32-room hotel in Sacramento. The opportunity arose when the hotel was emptied due to the wartime internment of Japanese Americans. This marked the first hotel owned by a person of Indian origin in the United States. Desai’s practical business decision inadvertently started […]