Navneet Singh Chugh
Founder & Managing Partner
Chugh, LLP | Los Angeles, CA (USA)
Native
Lahore (undivided British India)
Birth
Nagpur, Maharashtra (India)
Residence
Los Angeles, CA (USA)
Building Profit for Others
Working hard for millions of dollars for charities. Who does that? Well, this lawyer-accountant does!
I was born in Nagpur on 15 September 1964. My father, Sardar Mohinder Singh, had moved there from Ludhiana in 1947 with his family but my grandfather could not make it. What happened to him, no one knows till date. What is known is that Daddy’s family was allotted a haveli1 in Ludhiana post-partition. The entire family lived there until he was posted to Nagpur, where my Daddy and Mummy, Sardarni Jasbir Kaur, moved to. My siblings, Ishwinder and Balvinder, both elder to me were born in this city world famous for oranges.
Ishwinder was 9 and Balvinder was 3 at the time I was born. Our’s was a typical family; Daddy was the sole-bread winner, Mummy was the all-in-one homemaker and we siblings enjoyed childish quarrels. But we all were close and always excelled in studies despite my parents making me skip grades. That changed when mom got angry at something one day and decided not to supervise our studies anymore. Daddy stepped in… but he was not mom! I often slipped a comic book between my textbooks and he never figured it out! Mummy also ensured we had the right Indian values.
At 15 when I entered high school, while I was the youngest student, I had gone down quite a few notches from brilliant to a mediocre student. Around this time, we lost Ishwinder – who was at that time an Army officer posted in Sikkim – to a car accident. Mummy was away in the USA visiting her sister, so only Daddy and Balvinder attended his last rites. I didn’t even get to see him; it was a devastating time for the family. Captain Ishwinder Chugh was just 22.
When the one-eyed man is the king
When I enrolled in BCom at GS College of Commerce and Economics after completing schooling from Kendriya Vidyalaya in 1977, I was like “hey, this studying business is not bad after all”. Moreover, it so happened that all the good students had taken up Science and the so-called bad students opted for Commerce. My brilliance and excellence began to shine through once more. I even got selected for the college Hockey team; I wasn’t good at it, but they taught me and I learnt it well! I also read a lot of books, any and every I could lay my hands on. Eventually, I got so much into studies that in the entire university I was the only person who got first division in B Com in 1980.
As soon as I was done with college, I enrolled in a law school, Mahatma Gandhi Law College, Hyderabad. Barely had I completed a year when mom was grappled by bladder infection for which India had no cure back then. Fortunately, my Los Angeles-based maasi2 told us a physician there who had developed a drug. Though we knew that the drug was in testing phase and was not FDA-approved, Mummy and I went there in 1981 anyhow. What we were ignorant about was that she would have to visit the doctor in San Diego every month. We decided to stay back and I tried to get a job, but I couldn’t get one. In the next four years, I took another bachelor’s degree in 1983 from West Coast University, LA, did my MBA from the University of Southern California, passed the CPA exams and in 1985 started my CPA practice.
Two years later, I came to know of a law school offering free tuition to the winners of an essay competition. I participated and won. Keeping my CPA practice alive, I attended the law school part-time. Alongside, I also worked in an IT company, BMD, Inc, learning the programming world. Once I got the law degree in 1992 from Western States University, I founded Chugh, LLP and started helping IT companies.
Work on the business and not in the business
A year before completing law school, I got married to Ritu Ahluwalia, the daughter of a family friend, on 25 May 1991. Her father was in the Indian Air Force and our families had become friends when he was posted in Nagpur. Although their family moved a lot because of her father’s job, our families always stayed in touch. We developed a certain fondness for each other at her sister’s marriage in 1986, and gradually began talking once every month, then once a week, then every day and then every hour. The birth of our children, Veeraj and Sabrina in 1995 and 1997, respectively, gave my life a new direction, meaning and responsibility. Now Ritu is one of those patriots who strongly believe in the song Saarey jahan se aaccha, Hindustan humara3. Every time she hears that song, she says that she doesn’t want to be in America. She agreed to accept American citizenship only when Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cards were implemented in India, which was 25 years after we had come to America.
This IT experience aided me in my business because when the economy spiked in the 1990s, thanks to the technological advancements, Chugh, LLP helped Indian companies with immigration, litigation, mergers & acquisitions (M&A), employment, tax, bankruptcy law, etc. By 1999, the company was in good shape and we had a million-dollar client that accounted for nearly 20 percent of the firms’ revenue. When that client was with my firm, I was spending most of my time in the business. Losing that client was both a boon and bane. I realised that instead of working in the business for my clients, I should focus on the business to grow. With that approach, my firm got another client in just three months. Today, we have 12 offices in India and the USA, all being run quite successfully.
To whom much is given, much is expected in return
Born to religious parents, the teachings of Sikhism were always close to my heart. Mummy would not give us breakfast until we had first prayed for half-an-hour. I was, therefore, a dedicated Sikh since childhood and knew the importance of dasvand4. However, the 1984 anti-Sikh riots got me addicted to social work and charity. It so happened that when Indian actor, Sunil Dutt, wanted to start the Nargis Dutt Memorial Foundation in the USA, I ended up being the treasurer of the foundation. Around the same time, one of my close friends, Bajirao, working at Padhar Hospital, near Nagpur, told me that his hospital needed a cystoscope for detection of cervical cancer. As soon as we raised the funds for the foundation, we bought the machine and shipped it off to the hospital; ever since, I have been working with charitable institutes American Indian Foundation (AIF) and Pratham.
What makes me the happiest is that Veeraj and Sabrina have an inclination for charity. There was this incident when I jokingly asked them to raise charity funds instead of whiling away their time in birthday parties. To my surprise, within two weeks they started AIF Junior Chapter and came up with $1,100 from their Halloween collections! Later, Veeraj became the president of AIF Juniors Club, succeeded by Sabrina too. After completing his BS in Business Administration from USC, he joined Uber and Sabrina is interning with Deloitte in Los Angeles, both continuing their charitable work.
The one lesson I am grateful for to the USA is shun the ‘chalta hai’5 attitude and take ownership of your work and the society! I am glad and proud that all my extended family is close to each other. We are almost a joint family today too; my parents stay with us which reflects in our children.
Philosophy
There is always a solution to everything. Literally everything!
I love…
Reading books. None can inspire more.
I’d suggest the youth…
to treat others like they would like to be treated. Empathise with people and be self-motivated.
Success Mantra
Never give up. Think long-term profit and share your wealth with the needy.
The world doesn’t know that…
In high school I was associated with the rowdy of my college for whom I ran errands like passing notes to girls or stealing girls’ lunch boxes.
Gallery
ISBN : 9788193397695