As a school student, I was one amongst those selected by the Panaji Jaycee Club for their summer job programme aimed to motivate young students. Under that project ‘Earn while you Learn’ I was placed at Cesar Menezes’s pharma outlet in Panaji. It was a learning experience promoting cosmetic products and toiletries.
Cesar even then ran a well organised business with the all out support of his wife Dr. Maria Emilia Menezes affectionately known as Mimi. Together a great partnership and it was a pleasure working under them over five decades ago. A man of few words, Cesar to date still has the same ethic of hard work with humility and dedication. He has had a passion for sailing and was recently honoured with a lifetime achievement award.
Graceful, charming and intellectual, Mimi was the first lady to have headed the All India Catholic Union and still works tirelessly on issues concerning the minorities. Their Staff and friends have nothing but praise for Cesar & Mimi. Friends to many from all walks of life, Love, Care and Empathy all in one, is rare to find but they possess it all.
Cesar & Mimi through Corporate Social Responsibility of their company Wallace, run the Prateek Menezes Memorial Foundation in memory of their son Prateek who passed away at the age of six of Erwin’s sarcoma, a very rare bone cancer. They offer help to poor children with cancer in collaboration with Mumbai’s Tata Memorial Hospital having already aided over 800 cancer affected children and also funding training of several Goa based paediatricians in Cancer care in addition to a special five bed wing at GMC under the care of their foundation.
Their empathy for the less fortunate, those with special needs, the old, the ailing and downtrodden is a trait one seldom comes across in today’s materialistic world. Their two dear daughters Divya and Rashmi along with their husbands have been rightly geared and empowered to shoulder the responsibility of carrying forward the business legacy so well set up by Cesar & Mimi.
