Best financial sourse

For more than two decades, Ashwin Patel has been bringing Indian and Pakistani grains and spices — as well as the latest Bollywood movies — to St. Louis through Seema Enterprises, his grocery business.

Patel can often be found behind the cash register at the store, at 10635 Page Avenue. He knows most of his customers by name, some of whom come from as far away as Columbia, Mo., and Carbondale, Ill., to stock up on groceries every month.

Inside his stores, customers can find a couple of dozen types of rice — parboiled, kerala, ponni, Basmati and so on. It’s also one of the only places St. Louisans can find gongura and methi leaves, lychee and green mango juices, Indian-style frozen hot pockets, henna, toothpaste made with neem herbs, and shelves full of teas from the region.

Patel immigrated to the United States from India in 1978. In 1985, he and his wife, Raksha, took over Seema Enterprises after the store’s former owner passed away.
The Page store, which first opened in 1977, was one of the first Indian groceries in the Midwest, according to Patel.

In 1991, he expanded to a second location to Manchester Road, wanting to be closer to the nearby Hindu temple and the growing South Asian population moving into west St. Louis County.

In the last two years, he’s nearly doubled the size of both stores so he has more space to display the ever-expanding variety of South Asian frozen and dried goods that are increasingly available.

Over the years, Patel has also helped fill a void in the community by sponsoring movie screenings and musical performances by some of Bollywood’s biggest musical stars including the likes of Asha Bhosle, Sonu Nigam and Jagjit Singh, to name a few.

How has your business changed in the last 25 years?

It’s a big change. In that time, there were not that many things available, just rice, flour, dals (lentils). We didn’t have frozen food and ready-to-eat meals then, which are becoming much more popular with this new generation. … At that time, there were only one or two kinds of rice: long-grain or jasmine. Basmati was hard to get back then (and it was so expensive and hence, less popular.) Now we sell almost 25 different kinds of rice. Tamil people eat a different kind of rice. Telugu people use a different rice. …

With the popularity of Indian cooking, are more of your customers non-South Asians? Or is your core business still South Asians?

We have non-South Asian people — they are at least 15 percent of our customers. They mostly come here looking for spices and rice.

A lot of the non-South Asians are becoming vegetarian. So they come to Indian grocery stores to see what they can cook. … And these days, more people are becoming samosa-lovers.

You sponsor a lot of movie screenings of Bollywood movies in area theaters. When did you start that and why?

We started doing that in 1994 … I love Indian movies. When I was growing up in India, I used to watch the first day, first showing of new movies. When we came here, we were out of touch with Indian movies for 15 to 20 years. … Then distributors started to bring the movies to the big cities in 1993-94. So we tried it. … Bollywood has become so popular …

Movie rentals used to be a big part of your business, too, right? Do you still do that?

At one point, movie rentals were 25 percent of the business. But we discontinued that about seven months ago.

Nobody rents anymore. The Internet is bringing more mischief with the piracy thing. … We were paying more money to the distributors and less people were renting them or going to the theaters. Nowadays, many people have Indian satellite channels. About 75 percent of South Asian households have a satellite TV. And they can watch 24 hours of shows and news in their own native languages. …

We also used to sell audio CDs, too. But nobody buys it anymore. They just download it.

Are you worried about the future of your business as the first generation of South Asian immigrants ages and there are more second and third generation South Asians?

The kids who are born here, they are not going to be coming here as much. … I think it might survive but in a different way.

With them, items like Indian hot pockets and naan pizza are really popular. It won’t be the same, but we’ll be OK for at least 10 to 15 years. … But it’s going to be changing.

The kids who were born here, they still have roots. But the newer generation, we don’t know. My son likes Indian food. But the next generation?

Source