Gala will celebrate billionaire’s charity work in slums of Mumbai
Nothing about Vijay Goradia’s persona suggests grandeur. But the soft-spoken, gentle-mannered Indian immigrant has built a formidable legacy with a global impact for millions of people.
Goradia, with a fortune estimated at $1.3 billion by Forbes magazine, is best-known in the business arena as the founder and chairman of Vinmar International, a petrochemical marketing and distribution company headquartered in Houston, with over 50 offices in more than 35 countries through several subsidiaries. He is also the funder, principal owner or shareholder of other corporations.
Perhaps less known is the work of the nonprofit organization he founded, Pratham USA. Goradia’s work with the organization will be honored Saturday with a gala marking its 20th anniversary and the 60 million children it has assisted in India and other countries.
Goradia established Pratham USA in Houston after visiting India in 1999 and learning about an educational program in the slums of Mumbai founded by D. Madhav Chavan, who went back to his native country after teaching chemistry at the University of Houston.
Goradia was impressed with
Chavan’s approach: “Instead of building schools’ infrastructures, he simply developed a teaching methodology which was very basic, very joyful in nature and with a very low cost,” he said.
Chavan’s program trained women with high school educations to teach slum children between ages 3 and 7. Lessons were presented in small huts or under trees.
“It was amazing that these kids, even though they probably barely got one square meal or have a decent pair of shoes, were so hungry to learn that all they needed was a chance, an opportunity,” said Goradia. “It cost only in those days $8 per child for a whole year!”
Business principles
Goradia said he applies the same principles to his charity work as he does to his business.
“What got me attracted in the first place was the scalability of the model, because it doesn’t have to build schools so they can scale up very fast,” he said.
In Houston, Goradia pledged the first $125,000 for a similar venture and pledged to match the next $125,000 raised in the community. He upped the ante the next year and invested larger sums with every fundraising cycle.
During the 2018 annual gala in Houston, Pratham USA raised a record $2.8 million. The organization expects to surpass that sum at Saturday’s sold-out event, featuring Bollywood superstar Anil Kapoor, known for his role in the Oscar-winning film “Slumdog Millionaire” and other films. Pratham USA has several chapters around the country and holds a fourstar qualification, the highest standard, from Charity Navigator.
Goradia noted that during its initial years, 90 percent of Pratham USA’s funding was raised in the U.S. Today, however, the U.S. share has shrunk to 60 percent even as the overall budget has grown. It has around 12,000 fulltime employees worldwide.
Goradia likes to see in his projects the capacity to multiply, “replicating the model over and over and over again,” he said. He also strives for accountability and measured outcomes.
To accomplish this, Pratham mobilizes around 25,000 people every two years to traverse India evaluating the impact of the services. They produce an annual status report, “and those results then are published where the government has no way to hide or make up numbers,” said Goradia.
‘Life was simple’
Goradia, 67, was born in Mumbai in what would be considered a middle-class household under Indian standards. He grew up in a one-bedroom apartment in a family of five brothers and five sisters. But even with limited means, he said, his parents made sure to educate all of them.
“Life was simple back them,” he said, but his ambitions were great. His first entrepreneurial adventure, at 17, was the creation of a small plastic processing factory in his native town, which he and a brother later replicated with two more shops.
A few years later, a backpacking trip with a friend through Afghanistan, Iran, Greece and other countries taught him important lessons: “I learned that I have the ability to survive on my wits; second, that there were honest, decent, good people in this world that you could trust; and the third is that, if you are genuine and you are willing to help others, others are going to help you as well.”
He moved to New York, where he began earning money by helping Indians in the plastics business who wanted him to check on their interests in the U.S. This gave him access to the petrochemical industry.
He moved to Houston and founded Vinmar as the industry shifted to the area.
“Houston has been very good to me in more ways than one,” said Goradia. “It’s such a welcoming, very friendly city where you could be a stranger and your neighbors will, as they did, welcome you.”
He said he warmly remembers that, moving to the first place he lived in Houston in the Kingwood area with his wife, Marie, “ladies would come and bring welcome packages. I had never known what a pecan pie was until a neighbor brought one for us. I liked it, but it’s more than the pie itself,” he said.
With his adventurous, inventive spirit, Goradia recognized that he is a man who tends to take great leaps for the right purposes.
“What makes me happy more than anything else is knowing that I am making a meaningful difference in the life of many, many people, without them knowing me personally and me knowing them personally,” he said. “I don’t expect anything in return.”
The next exploration: “I signed up with Virgin Galactic to travel to space.”