SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, May 5, 2003: The Indian Community Center opened in the San Francisco Bay Area, home to 150,000 Indian Americans, in February. Rajwant Ahluwalia, who came to the U.S. 20 years ago, says he’d been waiting since then for a place like this to open. “The moment I read about this facility in the newspaper I was very excited and my family was excited too because we never had these services for our community.” He and other Indian-American parents like him would like to see their sons and daughters take a class on Indian languages, music, yoga or mediation. There are also free legal and medical clinics and orientations for recent emigres. Seniors can attend daily programs, and young people can drop in for karaoke and Bollywood movies. Cofounders, Gautam Godhwani and his brother Anil, were the driving force behind the opening of the facility. They were dot com entrepreneurs who made their fortunes, retired, and then turned full time to creating this center. The Godhwani brothers contributed half-a-million dollars in seed money for renovating the facility, hiring initial staff, and doing research. Then they raised $1 million from the Indian community to run the center.
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