Raja Sweets

Raja Sweets, at 5667 Hillcroft Avenue in southwest Houston, was opened in 1986 by Joginder "Yogi" Gahunia, a Punjabi Sikh immigrant, and his wife Resham Gahunia; the Houston Press once gave the year as 1985, but the shop marked its 25th anniversary in April 2011. Gahunia had run restaurants in England and in Cleveland, Ohio, before moving to Houston in the early 1980s, and his daughter Sharan later recalled that he found no Indian restaurants in the city and no place for Indian families to gather. Fellow Hillcroft merchants credited him with opening Houston's first Indian sweets shop. It started in about 1,500 square feet on a stretch of Hillcroft with only a handful of Indian stores, and doubled in size in 1990.

Other early South Asian businesses on the avenue included Karat 22, a jewelry store opened by Aku and Meena Patel at 5623 Hillcroft in 1984, and Yatin Patel's India Grocers, opened in the mid-1980s. Gahunia was a member of the India Culture Center, which in 2002 began seeking a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi on Hillcroft. A petition to rename the avenue Mahatma Gandhi Avenue failed for lack of support among its non-Indian owners and merchants, so the group turned to street sign toppers instead. About $10,000 from India Culture Center leaders and Hillcroft merchants paid for 31 red-trimmed signs carrying a small engraving of Gandhi, and Mayor Annise Parker proclaimed January 16, 2010, Mahatma Gandhi District Day.

Gahunia, remembered as one of the "founding fathers of Hillcroft," died of pancreatic cancer in January 2002, eight years before the designation. Resham and Sharan Gahunia ran the shop after his death.