Late Shri Baldevbhai Dosabhai Patel – Born in 1917, Sanand, Gujarat
Late Shri Baldevbhai was born in a village named as SANAND near Ahmedabad.
His father’s name was Dosabhai and mother’s name was Jadiben.
Leadership accompanied by vision was the prime quality of Shri Baldevbhai. He joined his father in a business of grain at the age of only 20 and made Ahmedabad as his area of operation. He was proficient, competent, capable and clever in the business. His style of business business with service, made him popular and loved among business community. He was capable enough to accomplish any job, efficiently, and in time. These qualities made him a true leader. He started cotton business in 1972 and earned the credit of a reputed businessman.
In 1958, he established Grain Merchants society. In 1962, he was elected as President of Ahmedabad Grain Merchant Association. In 1973, he became President of “Gujarat Anaj Vepari Sangh” and in 1982, he was elected as President of “Gujarat Vepari Mahamandal”.
In 1969, when major banks of the country were nationalized, the businessmen were avoided for convenient, easy and speedy credit from banks. Therefore he thought of establishing a bank for Grain Merchants. Late Shri Gopaldas Shivlal Patel and Late Shri Arvindbhai Saheba joined him in his new venture.
The Reserve Bank of India granted the license to start the bank and on 5th December 1970, The Kalupur Commercial Co-operative Bank Ltd. started functioning in a small room at Kalupur area.
Late Shri Baldevbhai Patel’s vision of helping the society in the areas of Health, Education etc could give birth to many organizations engaged in Social services.
In 1983, Late Shri Baldevbhai, established “SANAND Education Trust” and also started Girls School at Sanand in memory of his mother Late Shrimati Jadiben. He was leader, and instrumental in establishing Girls School, Women’s Collage, Pharmacy College at Gandhinagar under the banner of “Kadi Sarvavidyalaya Kelvani Mandal”. The Kelavani Mandal started the courses like MBA, MCA etc. later on.
As a founder of the Bank Shri Baldevbhai had set few goals for bank.
- To maintain the self respect of the businessmen.
- To provide easy and timely credit to the businessmen with simple procedure.
- Profit making not a barometer of success of the bank.
- He wanted the bank as a symbol of common man’s bank and wanted to provide easy credit to the needy persons even without securities. The person with small means should be able to get loans easily.
- He had a vision of transparent management.
In the year 1988, the Reserve Bank of India gave the status of Scheduled Bank to 11 Co-operative Banks in the country out of 1400 Co-operative Banks. There were three Co-operative Banks who were granted this status in the State of Gujarat. The Kalupur Commercial Co-operative Bank was the only Bank in the city of Ahmedabad to be receive this status.
The Bank got the status of Multi-State Scheduled Bank from the year 1995. Now the Bank is competing with Nationalized Banks, Private Sector Banks in terms of technology and services at very affordable charges to the customers.
The vision of Late Shri Baldevbhai has succeeded. The bank is functioning as per his vision. Shri Baldevbhai died in the year 1997 during a function organized at the time of merger of Standard Co-operative Bank with Kalupur Bank.