12 minute read
Champion Women: The Story of Global Adjustments
Madras Management Association in Partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung organised a hybrid event under Start‐up Series on the theme, “Championwomen – The Story of Global Adjustments” on 25 August 2021 at MMA Management Centre. Dr Ranjini Manian, Founder Chairperson, Global Adjustments Foundation & her daughter Ms Rohini Manian, CEO, Global Adjustments Foundation were in conversation with Mr V Shankar, Founder CAMS & Director, ACSYS Investments Pvt Ltd.
Shankar: You studied French from Elphinstone College, Mumbai, and then went to University of Sorbonne, Paris. You spent some time in Japan. You hail from an ancient culture to begin with, and you have an affinity to the French language and France and the Japanese culture. All these are really deep rooted cultures. You pioneered the relocation business in India. That was a great USP at that point in time. How did this unique idea come your way? Tell us about your early years.
Ranjini: Mine is a story of passion and effort. I was raised in Bombay in a professional, white collared family. My mom rose to become the first woman to head a nationalised bank. So I knew that women empowerment was about more than contributing to your family. I wanted to go to Paris and study. That dream was fulfilled by my father who always encouraged me to do what I had to, to fulfill my passion. He sold off a small office space in Maker Bhavan in Nariman Point to have the money to send me to Sorbonne.
Being a vegetarian, I had to go to bed hungry every night, not knowing where to find the food, even though I had a little money in my pocket. I would go to bed crying, till I found the right people to befriend and who guided me and became part of my inner circle. After that, the Sorbonne experience was fantastic. After almost a decade, I took up Japanese, in Chennai at the Indo-Japan Centre.
I realised once again that you have to be immersed in a culture to really understand it. So I went off to Japan to live and work there and become a cultural and language conversational teacher. That taught me so much. The idea of relocation business was very close to my heart. The FDA had just opened and foreign companies were coming in. The woman with whom I co-founded it was Joanne Huskey - the wife of a US Diplomat. That helped a lot because Joanne and I were from two different cultures. Joanne understood processes; I understood culture and the nuanced relationships of the cities that we were set up in. That partnership worked. My lesson to entrepreneurs is: Please find a partner who complements your skills.
We built our team on women. At that time, there were not many jobs being given to women. Being a women managed company was a challenge. The relocation business was new and people wondered why we should charge for the relocation services, with atithi devo bhava being our platform. When we hold onto our idea, a time comes when the tipping point happens.
Rohini. You spent some time in realty business before you stepped into your mother’s shoes. Your education has also been in the software discipline. Tell us about stepping into the big shoes of your mother and about how you relate to your brother.
Rohini: I finished my schooling and went to study business leadership. The only thing I have known my whole life is business. In our house, conversations at the dinner table were always about business, construction and real estate prices. So my first love is Real Estate.
I first started by working with my brother in sales and marketing in Radiance Realty. The next logical thing for me to do was to try and work with my mother who has given me such a fantastic platform. I love working at Global Adjustments. We are such a unique business. We interact with so many nationalities. We have offices pan India and every day, I learn so much and to be honest, I have very little to do in Global Adjustments because of the fantastic team that we have. We are still all women in the leadership. We have managed to retain that, but our man to woman ratio is now 50:50.
When it comes to business between the family members, we find a lot of synergy. We support each other. Varun and I are siblings but we are best friends. He is an ‘ideas’ person and I am the execution person, good at marketing and sales. He gets numbers really well. So we complement each other and in all businesses that we do, we have a stake together.
I recently founded a business called Propcierge, which is an end-to-end real estate platform that does construction, interiors as well as brokerage and other services. In short, everything I do is related to real estate. I have taken the best learning from my mother, which is people first and culture first and warmth in everything you do. From my father, I've learned that process matters, number matters and discipline matters. They both are my role models.
Tell us some quirky, memorable or teachable incidents that you might have had with the any of your projects.
Rohini:Two and a half years ago, I was seven months pregnant and I got a call from my office saying that a very senior, billion dollar company CEO was coming to town in his private jet and that I had to meet him. I met him at the Leela Palace lobby. He had an armoured car and four bodyguards and he wanted to explore Chennai because they were planning to set up here. I took him to see a couple properties. Within four minutes, he bought two four million dollar apartments and I am not kidding. He paid it on his credit card.
After that, we went to have lunch at the Madras Club. When I couldn't finish what I ate, he asked me, “Aren't you going to pack this? Why would you want to waste food?” I was dumbstruck and it completely changed my perception about expats. That was the first thing I learnt from somebody so senior.
The second thing. He wanted to register his property immediately because he had paid it in full. At the registration office, thanks to bureaucracy, it took about two and a half hours. The developer and I were getting super impatient, checking our watch and asking the people there if they could expedite. But the CEO was sitting back relaxed. He said, “It’s okay. Everything takes time. I'm patient.” That really taught me something--that what expats perceive of us is also so different. That was a huge learning for me.
Ranjini: I had a real stressful experience and now it seems funny. Years ago, people came to check our building and said some super VIP was coming and as part of security protocol, they had to check our building and office. We have an office dedicated to Indian culture. Amazon had hired us and we were working with them. From the way the bodyguards were coming, I guessed the head of Amazon - Jeff Bezos - would land. They wouldn't tell us because it was a secret. The officials, industry and press were not aware he was coming. His team asked me to talk to him about the whole Indian culture in one hour. I was ready and Jeff Bezos walked in. He was super-stressed as he had just lost his BlackBerry phone. It was lost in a vehicle in his convoy. For the first few minutes, he was very restless and didn't want to do anything.
I took him to the altar just to distract him. I showed him ‘Ganesha, Saraswati and Lakshmi’ that were there. “Look at this. This is India,” I said. He asked me, “Okay. Is he married to both those women?” “No,” I replied. “She looks after wealth. She looks after wisdom. He balances those two and that's why, he can remove all obstacles.” Jeff Bezos liked that so much. I told him, “They're not related but the concepts are related in India. Anything you come to do in India, if you understand the concepts, you will always do well. That's it.” He forgot about his BlackBerry and said, “Come on, let's do the program.”
Then in the next 15 minutes, his team brought his Blackberry and so we heard the loud, Jeff Bezos’ honking laughter for which he's famous for. He asked a lot of questions on retail as well. I couldn't discuss retail with all the bodyguards sitting in the room. Amit Agarwal who is now the current head of Amazon was also with him. So I suggested that he should come with me shopping to Nalli Silks where he could learn retailing. He agreed.
The next morning, he came with us to the sari shop and it was fun because when I walked in with him, there was a woman who recognized me and said, “This man seems to be a familiar figure.” I feigned ignorance. I showed Jeff how people buy sarees, how groups decide which sari the bride should buy and how price sensitive we are. He was able to watch our retail behavior.
This event taught me that if you ask nicely, if you speak confidently about your subject matter expertise, then as a start-up, as an entrepreneur, anywhere, you gain the respect of no matter who it is. Many years later, my sister who was at the Stanford Alumni meet came across Jeff Bezos in San Francisco and told him that her sister (referring to me) trained him in Indian business culture. Jeff told her, “Oh, Your sister should become a stand-up comedian. She's very good.” So he thought I was funny! Incidentally, Rohini now does warehousing for Amazon.
How did covid-19 play out in your company?
Rohini: It completely hit our relocation industry, because we are so dependent on FDI coming here. Foreigners have completely stopped coming to India from last March. We have only 20 percent of the normal volume, but fortunately for us, we diversified and expanded a couple years ago. What we are noticing is that the Indian clientele is way more involved and aggressive, when it comes to real estate practices.
FDI is picking up and the Modi government is also taking many positive steps. I think things are going to get a lot better. That being said, our new government in Tamil Nadu is handling Covid-19 extremely well and the ministers are very proactive.
On 24 May, the new government took office. I sent the minister for industries a message saying that I wanted to meet him to discuss FDI. Within 45 minutes, I got a reply, “Good morning, Madam. Can we meet day after at 9:30 a.m. in my office?” He messaged me the address of his office. I showed up at 9.25. The minister came in at 9:35 and told me, “Sorry. I'm five minutes late. I got stuck at the Secretariat.” This is the change we see today in Tamil Nadu. Honestly, I think we are in a golden decade and we should make the most of it.
Did you actually see an outflow of expats during Covid?
Rohini: Yes. Most of the people repatriated. They cut short their leases and slashed their rentals. Our team had a very tough time. Families left. There were split relocations where the working partner was here, but the family was back home. It was complete chaos. The total lockdown gave them very limited access to basic things like groceries. That was one of the main reasons that expats left.
Did you manage to substitute any of your interactions with the Zoom events?
Rohini: Yes. We did a couple of Zoom events. But what we noticed is that people were getting Zoom fatigue. Instead we put up a WhatsApp support group for every city that we have our offices and our clientele in. We had a 24/7 expat support group. We are slowly coming back to hosting safe coffee mornings and lunches for our clients.
Tell us about your Championwomen initiative.
Ranjini: I love to encourage women to become entrepreneurs. Championwomen is spearheaded by a separate spin-off company called Global Adjustments Foundation.
We do life leadership workshops. We teach several subjects like, for instance, building self-esteem, which are not being taught in colleges, workplace or at home. Women are very quick to learn from one another.
The curriculum was built around those areas that, as MNCs had said, was lacking in our women in India. At every milestone in their personal life, women would just quit work immediately. The family is, of course, very important to women. But did they support her? Did she have the confidence to speak up and ask for support? All of that was missing.
Championwomen is made up of those things that I studied at the Harvard Women's Business Leadership board and I brought those concepts of gender intelligence here but adapted them to the Indian scenario. We have worked with 175,000 women now. The program is made up of work-life integration, optimism and resilience topics.
What are the top things that you hear from MNCs that seem to bother them?
Rohini: We don't have enough access for recreation or social activities for expats and that is a very important part of their life. They thrive on it. They work hard and party hard. So we need to definitely improve on social infrastructure. The second thing is access to affordable international standards schools.
What do you do to cool off?
Rohini: I'm very much interested in fitness. My way to blow off steam is to either run or do some kickboxing or cycling. I have a very good set of friends who I like to go out with, on the weekend. I'm also the work-hard, party-hard and exercise-hard kind of person. And I cool off with my two and a half year old daughter.
A word of advice for women professionals?
Ranjini: It's very simple. Use the power of “and.” Should I be married or should I study? Should I take a transfer or should I remain with my husband? Replace your ‘or’ with ‘and’; look for solutions. Articulate the support that you need both at home and work. Women who are in the workforce have to be selective about the quality of time they give to children and families and about the quantity of things that they get involved in. Instead of juggling all the balls, they can focus on one ball and throw the rest to someone else. Do a few things really well and add value to them.
