01 — The Foundation

Chicago, 1980

Manish Patel arrived in the United States from India in 1973 as a student with little more than ambition and a willingness to outwork everyone around him. In 1980, with $8,000 — his entire life savings — he founded Printed Impressions Inc. in the basement of his townhome. The equipment he bought was equipment a seller told him was worthless. He moved it into his basement, taught himself how to use it, and when he couldn't afford supplies, bought ink by the pound in Styrofoam cups. What started in that basement quickly grew into one of the Chicagoland area's most recognized commercial printing companies, serving restaurants, universities, major corporations, and political clients across the region.

Anjana arrived from India in 1979, bringing with her a career in microbiology and a precision that would prove as valuable in business as it had in the lab. After building her own career at a Chicago pharmaceutical company, she joined Manish at Printed Impressions following the birth of their third child. Where Manish was the visionary and the risk-taker, Anjana was the anchor — controlling the finances, imposing structure, and providing the steady hand that turned ambition into a sustainable operation. Together they were a different kind of force.

02 — Building for Legacy

Late 1980s – 2008

As Printed Impressions grew, Manish and Anjana began to see clearly what they were really building — not just a printing company, but a foundation for something larger. They understood that a single business, however successful, couldn't build a legacy. So they did what they had always done: looked for opportunities, asked questions, learned from anyone willing to teach them, and said yes when others hesitated.

In the early 1990s they moved into retail. Then, in 1993, they went all in again — this time on a hotel. With their life savings on the line, they acquired a 100-room Best Western in Montgomery, Alabama. Months after closing, their sweat equity operating partner called and said he was done. He was heading home. The keys would be under a plant in the lobby.

Manish went home and told Anjana what happened. She didn't hesitate.

“Honey, you're going to go learn how to run a hotel.”

— Anjana Patel

He did. With no formal training, no playbook, and everything to lose, Manish learned the business from the ground up — what the industry calls an accidental hotelier. He asked for help, leaned on the team already on property, and not only righted the investment but acquired a second hotel in Montgomery shortly after.

What followed was a decade of deliberate diversification. Convenience stores. Laundromats. A portfolio of gas stations. Industries they had never worked in, learned by doing, built by asking questions and being willing to be vulnerable. JR grew up inside all of it — watching, learning, working alongside his parents in businesses that most people his age had never seen from the inside. It was an education no school could replicate.

Through it all, Manish and Anjana never forgot what it felt like to start with nothing. When other entrepreneurs — especially first-generation business owners — needed guidance, they gave it freely. Advice, mentorship, and in some cases the keys to a turnkey business ready to operate. It was never a formal program. It was simply who they were.

03 — The Next Generation

2009 – 2019

JR Patel had planned to be a mergers and acquisitions attorney. In 2009 he changed course, joining the family business formally and stepping into a portfolio that was broad, battle-tested, and full of potential. What he found was a collection of businesses built on instinct, hustle, and decades of hard-won experience — and an opportunity to build something more.

He had grown up inside these businesses, but joining formally was different. He was the GM, the front desk clerk running double shifts, maintenance, housekeeping — whatever the moment required. The same shadow learning that had shaped him as a kid now shaped him as an operator. His father would call on a Monday: we're renovating this hotel, first truck shows up Thursday, pack your bags. Decisions happened in days. There was no time to overthink.

But over time, something shifted. JR couldn't keep running hotels — or any of the family's businesses — as a collection of individual operations. There needed to be a company. His parents had been exceptional at building and running individual businesses. JR's contribution was structure. Where the first generation had been opportunistic by necessity — sort of good at a lot of things — JR brought the discipline to become really good at a few.

“My ethos was: let's build great companies to run great businesses.”

— JR Patel

The shift wasn't about abandoning the entrepreneurial spirit that had built everything. It was about channeling it. Moving from building businesses to building great companies that could run great businesses — and in doing so, creating a platform with the ability to scale far bigger and faster than any single business ever could.

He was given the mandate to evaluate the legacy portfolio — selling underperforming assets and redeploying capital into focused, scalable opportunities. Helix Hospitality was born from that process, bringing together the family's two decades of hotel experience under a single disciplined operating company. The name came from the spiral found in DNA — because as people had told JR for years, you may not always love this business, but it's in your blood. Five Properties was formalized in 2012 to capture the family's commercial and multifamily real estate investments. The platform was taking shape.

Throughout this period the family continued to invest in people as much as properties. First-generation entrepreneurs found in the Patels not just capital, but genuine partners — people who understood what it meant to start with nothing and build something real.