Kapur: The sky's the limit

By: Hailey Pitcher, MMAC Communications Intern

Ramesh Kapur remembers pumping water        outside his family’s one-room home every morning as a child in New Delhi, India. By age 13, he was determined to provide a better life for himself and his family. That meant leaving India and immigrating to the United States, something he immediately began working toward.  

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Over one quarter of U.S. entrepreneurs are immigrants, and Harvard Business Review says their businesses are more likely to thrive as they create job opportunities and revive areas with new ideas. The resilience and unique skill sets often acquired by those immigrating to a new country are a huge asset to communities and the economy, and their businesses bring in billions of dollars.

​This series highlights Milwaukee businesses that are founded, owned and operated by immigrants. We’ve had the privilege of hearing their stories and backgrounds, as well as what makes them so valuable to our community. 

Kapur is now the founder and president of Kapur, a consulting engineering firm based in Milwaukee, with offices in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Indiana and Florida. The company specializes in a wide variety of services, which include transportation, power and utilities, municipal, survey, construction management, environmental and more. They focus on building relationships with their clients, made up of government entities, private developers and public utilities.  
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Kapur was born and raised in India, where he was the youngest in a family of eight. In 1947, when he was 10 months old, religious conflict divided the country into India and Pakistan, forcing his family to flee as refugees. The government gave his family a plot of 1800 square feet, where they built a one-room house and an outhouse.  
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“We had nothing. I used to dream about America,” Kapur said.  
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Struggling families wanted more for their children, and many saw STEM as the path to success. Kapur said his dad told him to be an engineer, so he earned an engineering degree in India. He saved as much as he could from his need-based scholarship, then applied to graduate schools in the U.S.  
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When he received a scholarship from Marquette University to study Sanitary Engineering, he used the money he’d saved to get to the U.S. in 1968.  
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“I bought the plane ticket, and I had six dollars in my pocket when I landed here...I had nobody to call and nowhere to go,” Kapur said.  

Someone from Marquette picked him up from the airport that night, and he looked for an apartment the following morning.  
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Kapur understood English from his education as a child but struggled to speak it. He sat in the front row during his classes and eventually began to pick up the language. He worked each night to send money back to his family in India and began building a life in America. His jobs included welding, cleaning buildings, driving taxis and waiting tables at the Pfister Hotel.  
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He relocated to the University of Michigan after graduating from Marquette for a second master's degree before working as an engineer for two different companies. When he left the second company, he resolved to start his own business.  
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He saw the way many companies ran their businesses, and he wanted to be different. It didn’t sit well with him how much companies focused on profit instead of their employees and clients. He wanted a company where his employees were at the heart of it.  
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“If I take care of the employees, they will be happy and they will take care of the clients. If clients are happy, the work will come,” Kapur said. 
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He started his engineering firm in 1981 with a previous coworker. They worked out of a small house, with only a desk and chair for furniture. He began knocking on doors, trying to find a project to get started. Along the way, he was told his company would never survive. Kapur was determined to prove them wrong.

“Every night I would go home at midnight,” he said. “I’m an engineer, but I had to learn everything needed to be a businessman.” 

For one of his first project proposals, he competed with nine other businesses. His price was so low in comparison that he was nearly rejected for incompetence. Kapur convinced the company to give him a chance. His work impressed them, and he started building a reputation. 
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He began learning how to price his work to account for employees and bills. He learned labor laws and general business practices the hard way. These challenges were amplified due to the fact that they occurred during the 1981 recession.  
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“Growing up I never saw money, so I was a good steward of the money...I spent it only if I could afford it,” he said. 
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Kapur and his friends started a bank during the process of building his business, eventually selling it later on. Banking became a passion of his. 
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“I’m an environmental engineer. We got into the transportation, we got into the utility, we got into the technology because of the people coming here. They wanted to grow,” he said. “Our young hires saw opportunities for growth and we made it happen together. They worked hard to grow the business and we are still growing.” 
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Kapur has now worked on high profile projects such as the Milwaukee Bucks Arena District Site Design, Miller Park (now American Family Field), the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District and the Zoo Interchange, in addition to school districts, residential developments and countless other projects.  
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​After 43 years in business, relationships with employees and clients remain the priority at Kapur.

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“It’s not mine, it’s our company,” Kapur said. “When we started the company, we realized very quickly that it is not one person who makes us successful, but many of us working together. The credit goes to the whole team.” 
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Since the success of Kapur, he has helped other businesses learn the rules about owning a company. This allowed the businesses to avoid making the same mistakes he did.  ​

“When you come with nothing and you see the opportunities this country gives you, the sky’s the limit. All you do is, you’ve got to work hard. There is no substitute for hard work,” he said. ​

Kapur never gave up on the dream he had at 13, and it has paid off. He said this country and the support of his family, employees and clients have all contributed to Kapur’s growth and success. 
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“I work hard here. I worked hard in India. I’m 77 years old and I’m still working. That’s in my DNA,” Kapur said.