Indian-American business owners call for revitalisation policy

"COVID-19 pandemic has impacted everyone directly or indirectly around the world. Most of the Indian-American small business owners are struggling to pay basic expenses due to little or no income."

Washington D.C: A group of Indian-American business owners have sought from the campaigns of President Donald Trump and his democratic rival Joe Biden a sound policy for revitalisation of small businesses severely impacted due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Noting that the pandemic has bought them on the verge of bankruptcy, the small business owners rued that the steps being taken by the current administration has not been able to rescue them from this crisis.

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“COVID-19 pandemic has impacted everyone directly or indirectly around the world. Most of the Indian-American small business owners are struggling to pay basic expenses due to little or no income,” Dharmesh Verma, MCIS Multichoice Insurance Services, said.

Struggling to keep his business operational, Verma said there should be grants available to each business that can be used for the business expense and doesn’t have to pay back.

“It is a crucial time to support all the small businesses in America to revive the economy,” he said, adding that businesses are struggling and closing due to financial strains.

Ash Mirchandani, who is part of Las-Vegas based M Group, said small businesses employ half of the workforce and not only are these businesses closing in record numbers, they will also be leading to record unemployment in the months to come.

“Today there is no clear plan to get in front of this challenge. We have an administration that speaks a lot about the cause than the effect of this pandemic… and their efforts have fallen short and at best are band aids,” he said.

“We need sound public policy around small business revitalisation, there are many ideas, for example; providing financial aid to struggling small businesses so that they can stay open and keep the workforce employed, temporary sales tax holidays for small businesses, incentives for small businesses to hire. These are amongst many other solutions that will get the economic engines fired up,” Mirchandani said.

Chef Ranjan Dey, the owner of New Delhi restaurant in San Francisco, alleged that the mismanagement of Trump Administration has distilled into a domino effect which will shut down of 85 per cent of independently owned small family restaurant businesses in America.

Ajay Jain Bhutoria from the Biden campaign said that the Democratic presidential candidate believes the story of America is one of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

“The small business and entrepreneurship community is a core part of the American community and their contributions are evident in every part of society — and they are critical to our collective success as a nation,” he said.

Kiran and Kashish Shinde, the couple who own Kashish Salon Inc in the Silicon Valley, hoped that the next administration pays attention to pain points of small business owners and brings appropriate measures to support small business owners like me.

“COVID-19 shutdown has immensely affected small businesses like Beauty Salons. I am a small business owner for multiple salons. No Protection for rent to be paid for shut down period Government did not think about the business owners who are renters. The government introduced short term rent protection but what about the pending or no paid rent for the lockdown period? Landlords are behind business owners to collect rents,” they said.