US Hydrovac is a minority-owned business. The Indianapolis, Indiana, underground utility services company is certified as such. What does that mean exactly?

Four of the six certifications promoted on the company’s website are tied to company owner KP Panchal’s heritage. That is, he was born in India, moved to the U.S. with his family at age 3 and grew up in Indiana as a minority.  

Consequently, his business is certified by Indiana and, separately, by Indianapolis as a Minority Business Enterprise. It is a Diverse Business as certified by the National Minority Supplier Development Council. And the company is certifiably a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise, as pronounced by the Indiana Department of Transportation.

Such certifications can be valuable to a company when contract set-asides for minority businesses are part of the bidding process. Panchal acknowledges they can be an advantage.

“But I can also tell you that I was recently talking to team members and we concluded some of our biggest customers don’t even know we’re a minority firm," he says. "I don’t walk up and shake your hand and declare that I am a minority contractor. We are a quality contractor.”

The quality is certified, too. Two other certificates on the company's website are the Gold Shovel Standard for commitment to safety awareness, and the CCS Certification as a company with high levels of safety achievement. 

Panchal says he has sometimes experienced slights because he is foreign-born. He talks about when he was starting the company and trying to get sit-down talks with business owners.

“I would show up at 10 business offices, this kid in his twenties, and maybe get in to talk business at one of them. It was harder.”

But Panchal says it was a motivator for him, an added prod to succeed as an entrepreneur.

“Honestly, just proving everyone wrong was an incentive. Today, with the company a success, if I visited 10 offices, I would get in all 10 of them.”

Read more about US Hydrovac in the November 2023 issue of Cleaner magazine.