If the quiet leafy bylanes of R.A. Puram are an indicator of things to come, then the Global Adjustments (GA) office is the exact opposite: a flurry of activity. Carefully decorated and resembling a Chettinad house, a press conference is on here with the founders Ranjini Manian and Joanne Grady Husky and one of their first clients, former president of Ford, John Parker, about the duo’s new book Make It In India . The book, launched in the city last weekend, equips readers on how to navigate multi-cultural workspaces and improve business relationships, something that the relocation firm has been observing in the 20 years of its existence.
Joanne, who came to Chennai two decades ago with her husband and young children, realised that there was a need for the concept of relocation. “Our journey began with the idea of meeting and learning about each other. I felt privileged to know Ranjini and asked her ‘why don’t we start a business?’” Ranjini interrupts with a wry laugh, “Except I didn’t know what it was about,” adding that, “It was not a known business but she told me to look it up as it was very popular abroad.”
Ranjini later recounts how Joanne and she would “hang out” in the lobby of Park Sheraton and ask expats if they needed help with relocation and this went on until Ranjini’s husband pointed out that they might not look like respectable women walking up to strangers offering to help them. In 1995, (Mahindra) Ford became their first major corporate client: Global Adjustments had to relocate 80 families from the U.S., and immediately thereafter in 1996-1997, Joanne had to leave to Africa, “leaving the baby in Ranjini’s hands,” as she puts it.
The name of their venture was prophetic, admits Joanne. “We thought about the fact that people needed to adjust to be global; it’s a wonderful choice of a name,” she beams. Their 20-year journey has been significant for a lot of reasons; one of them, Joanne says, was the coincidence with India opening up as well. “We were at the right place at the right time. There were a few foreigners here, it was a moment of change and we were promoting global understanding.” Ranjini adds, “We were also helping FDI succeed in India; it was a journey of moving along with it.”
Global Adjustments, that started out with only two employees, has now grown into a 65-person company, handling clients like IBM, Ericsson, Motorola, Saint Gobain, Caterpillar, Daimler, BMW, Fidelity, GE Capital, Goldman Sachs, Cisco and more. It now not only offers relocation services but a host of other assistances like realty requirements for expats, cross-cultural training that includes doing business in India, gender diversity programmes and certain country-specific programmes. GA has a seminar called Taste of India that immerses guests into Indian culture through their five senses, a concert for a cause called Aikya that presents a “concert in a non-concert format and brings together stalwarts,” explains Ranjini.
Ranjini, who was selected as the only Indian on the Women’s Leadership Board at Harvard University, says that one of the turning points for GA was the moment she decided that she was going to open it out. “I believe that cultural intelligence is not the wealth of a few.” Gender intelligence is another concept that Ranjini not only believes in but says that she has a greater role to play in. “For the last 10 years, we’ve been empowering more women to stay in the workforce and helping them achieve work-life balance besides conducting programmes on gender equity.”
With offices now in Mumbai, NCR, Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad besides Chennai, the founders are keen to leave a legacy behind. “The world has changed. Earlier, before the advent of the Internet, the only way to understand a culture was to visit the place. Now, our company is even more important — everyone needs it,” says Joanne. Ranjini adds that she always had a vision that GA would be an impactful business.
Testament to this was the turnout at the launch of their book: industry doyens like R. Seshasayee of Ashok Leyland, chess champion Viswanathan Anand, and several members of the diplomatic corps of various countries. Ranjini and Joanne have compiled the answers to the most commonly-asked questions GA has faced while interacting with clients from both India and abroad. Giving these answers are some of the top management officials, both past and present, from Microsoft, IBM, Nokia, Facebook, HSBC Bank, Tata Starbucks, Biocon, Ford and Eurasia Group.
