Crystal Wise
Viran Nana’s life as an entrepreneur is entering a new stage.
What that new phase looks like, he’s not entirely sure. But rest assured, his full attention is on the next step.
“I’m not sure,” Nana says over the phone. “Looking for something bigger and better now. We’re still going to keep building car washes but do something else also.”
In June, Nana and his partner and brother, Jags Patel, sold their car wash business, Q Car Wash, to Caliber Car Wash, an Atlanta-based company.
The deal includes all 11 of Q Car Wash’s locations, including five in Fort Worth, and one each in Benbrook and Arlington.
The brothers built Q Car Wash into one of the largest operations in the express car wash space.
Nana, 58, who has a degree in business from UTA, and his brother still own three hotels, including a Marriott property in City View and two others in Denton.
Hotels were where it all started for Nana, who was born to Indian parents in Zambia, where his father was stationed in the service all those years ago as part of the Queen’s empire. The family moved to Dallas in the mid-1970s.
His father bought a small hotel near White Rock Lake. The family lived there, his parents ran it, and the children were the hired help — working there and going to school at the same time.
The brothers reentered the hotel industry for themselves in the mid-to-late 1980s, buying one on auction in Greenville. They eventually started a construction company to build the hotels themselves so as to better control the quality.
FW Inc.: How did you find your way to the car wash business?
VN: “In 2008, when the downturn happened, we couldn’t build any more hotels. We were stuck with a few pieces of land. Luckily, we rode through that and survived that downturn, but we couldn’t build hotels for a year or a year and a half.
“I got kind of bored. My son was small. I didn’t want to go too far away and build hotels in other markets. We always wanted to get into recycling. The hotel industry was so good that we couldn’t spend the time and energy to do the research. But now I had the time. We started going to conferences. We were in Canada, and this guy starts talking about car washes.
“They recycle the water, and they’re a positive carbon footprint and some other things I didn’t really understand. Took us about three years to research and go to conferences and get our first car wash opened in west Fort Worth.”
FW Inc.: It sounds like the entrepreneurial spirit is a family trait.
VN: “I was at UTA [in the early 1980s] when the TV satellite boom had just come out. My brother says, ‘Hey, do you want to install these things?’ We went to the distributor and said, ‘We’ll buy it if you teach us how to install this thing.’
“He taught us the first couple, and we put these satellite dishes around hotels, mostly hotels in Dallas-Fort Worth. I was doing really well.
“I graduated, and I thought I’d get a job. I got a job, and I was making one-third of what I was making while I was in school. I said, ‘This doesn’t work.’ My mother was at home, and she kind of missed the hotel business. So, we bought a hotel at auction in Greenville. Got back in the hotel business.”
FW Inc.: Do you ever see yourself retiring?
VN: No, not completely. I enjoy business. It’s not just about the money. I enjoy creating things and building things. I think I’ll die if I retire.”