Two Indian-American businessmen honored by Trump

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President Donald Trump has honored two Indian-American businessmen, Sharad Thakkar and Karan Arora, in recognition of their small but significant contribution to the United States economy, according to the PTI.

Thakkar and Arora were honored along with seven other minority businesses owners in the Oval Office of the White House on Tuesday, where Trump congratulated them and said he is “proud of” minority businesses and their contributions in creating jobs in the country, adding that his administration is deeply committed to empowering minority business owners and told PTI, “we’re working to lift government barriers so that you can thrive, prosper, and grow.”

The PTI reported that Thakkar is president of Polymer Technologies in Ohio which works with the individuals of the plastic industry, to transform their throwaway scrap plastic into valuable raw material.

Polymer Technologies has received the award for the Minority Energy Firm of the Year, and has a proven track record of providing long-term solutions in automotive, home care and lawn care product lines.

He came to the United States from Baroda, Gujarat, 30 years ago and is “very proud that this country gave me this opportunity.”

Thakkar told PTI that “Indian-Americans are making great contributions to the US economy” and added that Trump’s “tax reform, would not only simplify the process, but also put more money into businesses.”

Arora is the director of Natural Vitamin Labs in Florida which is a family-owned business with 25 years of experience in supplying natural health products to industry partners worldwide and is the recipient of Minority Export Firm of the Year award.

According to the PTI, the facility is equipped with a manufacturing practices system and fully automated packaging machinery that allows precision and error minimization, resulting in high speed production.

He came to the United States in 2000 from Mumbai, he told PTI that “the opportunities that we had have been fantastic, tremendous.”

Arora praised Trump’s policies saying that businessmen like him need to spend more time on “business planning rather than tax planning” and that his policies are reviving America’s manufacturing base adding that he simplification of tax code would come out as a great boon for small family-owned businesses like him.

“There is a big demand (globally) for US-made products, which have more value anywhere in the world,” Arora told PTI.

Both of them received their awards from the Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross at an event in Detroit on Monday where Ross told PTI that there were 996,246 minority-owned firms with paid employees last year throughout the nation, which is a 4.9 percent increase from the prior year and these minority-owned businesses produced $1.1 trillion of annual revenue.

“They employ eight million people, but only 22 percent of them have 10 or more employees. So, there’s plenty of room to grow. But we know that minority entrepreneurs are up to the task,” he told PTI.