Just five years after leaving a retail job to own and manage a CrestClean franchise, Mahesh Kanji was able to pay off the mortgage on his house.
A born and raised South Auckland man, Mahesh and his wife of 16 years, Dipti, started with CrestClean 10 years ago, when their children were five and three. Leaving retail to run their own business gave the couple the opportunity to work their job around their family, rather than having to work their family around their job.
Mahesh also relishes the fact that he can develop close relationships with the people he cleans for. Being his own boss means he can spend time building relationships with the people where he works, rather than having to closely watch the clock and account for every minute to an employer. Mahesh enjoys talking to the staff at the school he cleans, and at Villa Maria he knows everybody by name.
South Auckland Regional Director Viky Narayan finds Mahesh & Dipti a great team to work with, saying “They are very customer oriented and always go the extra mile to look after their customers”.
Mahesh and Dipti, although very Kiwi in nature, maintain close cultural ties with their homeland, including ensuring that their children grew up learning to speak Gujarati, their parents’ native tongue. Mahesh chuckles when other Indians working for CrestClean try to speak Hindi to him when they first meet, a language he doesn’t speak at all.
Mahesh is very grateful for Dipti’s input because as well as working full time in their business, she also works full time cooking and washing at home, and taking the kids to school. The couple love the support they get from CrestClean. Mahesh says, “The good thing about Crest is all you have to do is the work; everything else is all done for you, the paperwork, the GST returns, and we get paid fortnightly.”
