The Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, or IACC, is an emerging giant right here in the Atlanta Metro area. On this week’s episode of The Playbook, host Mark Collier, business consultant for the UGA Small Business Development Center, sits down with Dr. Charan Shikh the Founder and President of the Chamber. Dr. Charan Shikh is the Founder and President. Today, he shares how the IACC is delivering phenomenal value to its growing membership.
Transcription:
Mark Collier:
Welcome into The Playbook, Dr. Shikh.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Thank you, Mark.
Mark Collier:
All right. Listen, your chamber, I have been at your events and they are absolutely phenomenal.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Great. Thank you.
Mark Collier:
But I will let us begin with, for those who don’t know as much about you as I do, kind of share a little bit about your background, how you came to this country and whatever else you want to share, Dr.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
All right. How much time do we have, right? So I came to the country almost 40 years ago.
Mark Collier:
Wow. Four decades.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Four decades now. Almost four decades, yes. And I’m a doctor by training interim medicine. People call me Dr. Preneur now. An entrepreneur who came to America, looking for opportunities in the world, in medicine, healthcare, business. I came to America.
Mark Collier:
Great.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Okay. Back then, the Indian government will not let you take money with you if you’re leaving the country.
Mark Collier:
Wow.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Right? So even though you have money, they’ll let you take limited amount of money with you.
Mark Collier:
Okay.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
And that limited amount of money came out to be $18.
Mark Collier:
I don’t think you get any more limited than that.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
They sent me away to a new country and said, “Hey, you want to go to America? You can’t take the money. You got to go and make money over there,” right? And here we are 40 years later, and did practice. I practice for 30 years now.
Mark Collier:
Okay.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
And then those 30 years, I had this interest in business. I came from a business family.
Mark Collier:
Okay.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
And I was helping my father in India, running our departmental stores and a lot of small businesses, and as I was young, going to school. And the business side of me didn’t go away.
Mark Collier:
Okay.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Say, it was lurking behind somewhere that got to do something in life more than just medicine.
Mark Collier:
Sure. Sure.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
35 years of that in different businesses, and decided to just go ahead and start a chamber.
Mark Collier:
All right. So that chamber, I mean, it was your brainchild. You were the founder of the chamber, so.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Correct.
Mark Collier:
Tell me a little bit about the IACC, as it’s called, the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce. What is the chamber’s mission and vision? Kind of share that with me.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Glad you ask. See, there a lot of different Indo-American chambers.
Mark Collier:
Okay.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
We all get very cloudy with mission and vision and beautiful words. And simple, putting Indian community and businesses.
Mark Collier:
Okay.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Okay, we’re very diversified.
Mark Collier:
Yes.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
We got great number of… I mean, we’re like United Nations, believe it or not. It’s not just Indian.
Mark Collier:
Okay.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Okay? So got a lot of different businesses, small, medium size businesses, mainly in the Indian community. They just don’t know how to do business with the local market or mainstream American businesses.
Mark Collier:
Got it.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Same thing vice versa. I mean, American businesses don’t know how to reach the Indian community. So our main mission would be to pretty much just connect the Indian community and American community businesses, and minority-owned businesses, small, medium size, with your Fortune 500, Fortune 100 mainstream businesses, okay? And kind of put them in front of them to do business. So that connectivity, the platform that we provide is to connect.
Mark Collier:
Right.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Okay? The base is when the businesses come in, entrepreneurial spirit comes in and they create jobs, it automatically creates great economic development in the local region, and a community does well.
Mark Collier:
No, absolutely.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
So our vision became more of a community development and economic development and workforce development through this connecting, promoting and growing people’s businesses.
Mark Collier:
Okay. All right.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
That’s it. That’s the bottom line.
Mark Collier:
That’s a very simple and a very worthwhile mission.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Absolutely.
Mark Collier:
Because it all boils down to what you said about economic development, man. And creating opportunities for collaboration between the Indian businesses and the American business communities.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Right, right.
Mark Collier:
Perfect. So as you well know in being a businessman yourself, differentiation is the holy grail of all business models.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Absolutely.
Mark Collier:
So how is the IACC different from other entities and specifically other Indo-American chambers?
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Sure. There are different types of chambers.
Mark Collier:
Yep.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
I mean, chamber’s been around forever. You got Metro Chamber, Sandy Spring Chamber, Johns Creek Chamber, North Fulton Chamber, you name it. Every city, every region got their own chamber.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
There are also a lot of Indo-American chambers. If you just Google it, you’ll find probably six of them and say, “Here there’s one in Texas. There’s one here. There’s one in St. Louis. There probably one in Chicago, one in LA.” So where we’re different, okay, one, the name, Indo, in Indo-American throws people off sometimes.
Mark Collier:
It did me when I first, yes.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Yes. As a matter of fact, I think when I met you the first time at that event, there were 400 people.
Mark Collier:
Yeah.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Right?
Mark Collier:
That’s right.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
And in one evening I got asked at least 15 times, if not more, “Do I have to be Indian to join Indo-American Chamber?”
Mark Collier:
Right.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
And I had to kind of retrain people’s brain that you keep forgetting the American in the Indo-America.
Mark Collier:
That’s right.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
So you keep looking at Indo, but what do you think about the American?
Mark Collier:
That’s right.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
So when you look at Indo, okay? You turn your face to east and you say, “Indo.”
Mark Collier:
Yeah.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
That’s 1.4 billion people.
Mark Collier:
Correct.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Okay?
Mark Collier:
Correct.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Then you turn this way and say, “American,” that’s again 350 million more people.
Mark Collier:
That’s right, that’s right.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
And that’s the part people keep forgetting. And that’s the makeup of those 350 million people, is you got Caucasians, blacks, Mexicans, Latinos.
Mark Collier:
Correct.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
I mean, you name it. I mean, that’s all American to me. So I kid you not, I think people get lost with this Indo word.
Mark Collier:
Right.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
And the reason I kept the Indo word in there because of our main purpose in the beginning.
Mark Collier:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Okay? Because I’m from India, I know the Indian culture.
Mark Collier:
Right.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
35 years I’ve been doing business between America and India.
Mark Collier:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
I want to make sure that we have that connectivity that I have carried for 35 years with the government of India, with the Consul General of India here in Atlanta, with the Consulate of India who facilitate a lot of things for us when we go to India, all the Chamber of Commerces in India that they were sister alliances and.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
So I don’t want to lose all that. Those are some great resources that I can give to our members. But at the same time, with 35 years of working here. Okay? I have the resources on this side of the ocean, which are the economic development, people development, authority people. You got business leaders in the community here in US.
Mark Collier:
Sure.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
So what we’re doing is, the name may throw off, but where we’re different is most Indo-American chamber of commerces everywhere, I think do good job, nothing against that.
Mark Collier:
Right.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
But they forget the American components.
Mark Collier:
There you go.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Okay?
Mark Collier:
There you go.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
What happens, if you look at their makeup of their board, it turns out to be Indo-Indo.
Mark Collier:
Okay.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Okay?
Mark Collier:
All right.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
And probably out of 36, we have maybe five Indian people of Indian origin on board.
Mark Collier:
Okay. So the difference, Dr. Shikh, is that inclusivity and diversity becomes a strength for your chamber?
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Absolutely.
Mark Collier:
All right.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
100%. So we thrive on that. We take pride in that, number one. Number two, when you become Indo-Indo, then you end up doing business, Indians end up being business with Indians.
Mark Collier:
Right.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
They don’t get out of that community dynamics culturally and say, “How do I approach Delta? How do I go sell my services to a giant American company?”
Mark Collier:
Yep.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Because it’s not in their thought process, because they’re buying insurance from some Indian guy they know.
Mark Collier:
Correct.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
They’re borrowing money and mortgages to some Indian banker they know.
Mark Collier:
Yep.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
So what happens, they truly just stay within the community and they can’t get out of the community, so it becomes more Indo-Indo.
Mark Collier:
All right.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
And then comparatively, local chambers, and they do great job, like Metro, Sandy Spring Chamber, John, I sit on board of some of them, they’re regionally oriented.
Mark Collier:
Yep.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
They can’t get out of their city limits or the region limits.
Mark Collier:
Yeah.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
We don’t have that problem.
Mark Collier:
No, you don’t. You absolutely don’t.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Right. And also, people get bored with chamber sometimes. They join the chamber, then leave the chamber. They see no value in, they don’t get anything.
Mark Collier:
Yeah.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
The difference here is we’re so vested in our chamber’s members’ businesses, one-on-one that they see a lot of value. For a couple of dollars, they get me and the chamber as their business partner, pretty much.
Mark Collier:
All right. Everything boils down to value, Dr. Shikh. So Dr. Charan Shikh, Founder and President of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce. I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy day to come in, just detailing what your chamber’s all about and the value that it delivers not only to the members of the chamber, but the greater economic community. All right.
Dr. Charan Shikh:
Thank you.
Mark Collier:
All right.
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