By Aziz Haniffa
— WASHINGTON, D.C.
hicago native and
Indian-American Ravin
Gandhi, at 44, had
already lived the
American Dream and
then some.
The Waukegan, Illinois native,
the quintessential all American,
graduated college with a major
in accounting. With a CPA and
MBA under his belt, he joined his
father’s company, Coatings and
Chemicals Corp. and after working for a few years with his dad,
Kanti Gandhi — a chemist-turned-entrepreneur — he put a
deal together in 1998, to sell the
family business to Akzo Nobel, a
major global paint and coating
company.
After a five-year non-compete
agreement lapsed in 2007, he
went out on his own and founded GMM Nonstick Coatings and
built it up to become one of the
world’s largest suppliers of nonstick cookware coatings to such
iconic American brands as
Calphalon, KitchenAid, Wilton,
Oster, George Foreman,
Farberware, Crock Pot, and
Pyrex.
In 2016, GMM, which employs
hundreds of employees in the
U.S., China, India and Europe,
was acquired by Showa Denko
(SDK), a $7 billion Japanese conglomerate, in the largest buyout
in the history of the nonstick
coatings industry. Gandhi stayed
on as CEO.
Ten years ago, Gandhi, an
alumnus of the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
and the Kellogg Graduate School
of Management, had also started
Glenborn Partners, a private
equity fund. While moonlighting
as a venture capital investor, he
went about investing in technol-
ogy companies
that had raised
more than $250
million in equi-
ty financing.
In 2012,
Gandhi was the
first investor in
KeyMe, a high-tech manufacturer of robotic
kiosks revolutionizing the $8
billion locksmith industry.
To date, KeyMe
has raised more
than $100 million and Gandhi
was gung-ho about it becoming a
billion-dollar business in the
next two years.
Gandhi had already received a
lot of press as a top entrepreneur
and angel investor. He was a reg-
ular commentator on
CNBC, a contributor to
Fortune, Inc. Magazine
and Entrepreneur,
among others and of
course, his hometown
newspaper, the Chicago
Tribune.
But in August, after
he penned an op-ed for
CNBC on the recent
Charlottesville, Virginia
violence, trollers began
hurling racial epithets at
him for taking President
Donald Trump to task
and for calling Trump’s
response to the white suprema-
cist rally repugnant.
Gandhi had written: “I recent-
ly told the New York Times I was
‘rooting’ for certain aspects of
Trump's economic agenda. After
Charlottesville and its aftermath,
I will not defend Trump even if
the Dow hits 50,000, unemploy-
ment goes to 1 percent, and GDP
grows by 7 percent. Some issues
transcend economics, and I will
not in good conscience support a
president who seems to hate
Americans who don't look like
him.”
Almost immediately, he was
pilloried with tweets, e-mails
and voice mail rants, including
one from an alleged Trump sup-
porter screaming “get your
[expletive] garbage and go back
to India.” The woman hurled
other remarks his way, laced
with epithets and expletives.
She ended her voicemail
telling Gandhi to “go clean up
your own [expletive] country,
it’s a filthy mess.”
All that changed after Aug. 17,
when Gandhi went public with
this voicemail and other mes-
sages and virtually became a
rock-star. He posted the remarks
on You Tube, Twitter and
Facebook and they went viral.
He was overwhelmed by the
public support he received
defending him even as he con-
tinued to be interviewed on tele-
vision and newspapers, includ-
ing the Chicago Tribune.
He said he had decided to go
public against the trolls because
“no one has walked in my
shoes.”
“I am an Indian guy, who was
born in 1973 in Chicago on a
block where there was no Indian
people around me and I’ve
grown up in this country, and I
know what it is to be an immi-
grant in this country. And, I
know, how it is to have most of
my parents’ relatives still in
Bombay, and me sitting here as a
complete American.”
In a wide-ranging interview
with India Abroad, Gandhi said
that although some may have
perceived him as a Trump sup-
porter from some of his writings
advocating deregulation and
lowering of taxes, he was defi-
nitely not.
“I was very vocally against
candidate Trump in 2016, and I
made this very clear on many
CNBC appearances, advocating
for Secretary [Hillary] Clinton,”
he said.
“I was very publicly against
him in 2016,” he recalled, “but
after he was elected — and I was
also very surprised along with
many progressives — unlike a lot
of people who chose to be hys-
terical, I actually tried to be non-
partisan. I tried to see the posi-
tives of a Trump presidency and
I wrote an op-ed in February say-
ing that here are some positives
of his economic agenda.”
He said that as an entrepre-
neur he understands that lower-
ing regulations and taxes can
stimulate the economy. So, he
said, “I tried to be positive all the
while giving a caveat that if he
doesn’t seem really presidential
after a year, I’ll turn my sup-
port.”
That time came sooner than
he expected — with
Charlottesville.
“So, I feel now, actually much
more comfortable because I
believe I’m being much more
true to myself –being very
authentic,” he said. “I’m against
the man [Trump], but I am never
going to be against the country.”
He said the best option now is
to “use the platform that I have
now to call for bipartisanship,
and to call for the extremists to
shut up, and to have the middle
C
INDIA ABROAD September 22, 2017 16 INDIAN-AMERICAN AFFAIRS
INDIAABROAD.COM
He says
business
leaders must
stand ‘on the
right side of
history’
Exec
Sports
an All-
American
Fighting
Spirit
Trolled after
anti-Trump op-ed,
Chicago’s Ravin
Gandhi goes public
Continued on page 18
Ravin Gandhi, CEO and cofounder
of GMM Nonstick Coatings.
Below, Gandhi with his wife Sonal,
kids Grant and Pierce, and parents
Kanti and Renu Gandhi.