Every other guide in this pack answers “how do I do this task?”. This one answers the question underneath the whole move: how does the person who did not sign the contract build a real life here? If you are the partner, this page is yours; it talks straight about careers, the hard weeks, community and kids. If you are the assignee, share it tonight. For as long as the mobility industry has studied itself, how the family settles has topped the list of what decides an assignment, and that is exactly why this guide exists.
Read this first
IKAN works for your whole family, not just the employee. The counselling, the settling-in help, the consultant on the other end of the phone: all of it is yours to use directly. You never need to route a question through your partner’s office. Save the number in your own phone, and ask the small things; the tenth little question is as welcome as the first.
The truth first
Two things can be true at once
Moving to India can be the best thing your family does this decade, and the first months can still be genuinely hard for the person who moved for someone else’s role. Holding both truths out loud, together, is the single healthiest thing a relocating couple does. The assignee lands into an office, colleagues and a calendar on day one. You land into a beautiful, unfamiliar quiet, and build everything from scratch: the routines, the friendships, the sense that this city is yours too.
So treat your settling as the real project of the first quarter, with the same seriousness the assignment gets. This guide is the plan, and your IKAN consultant is staffed to it.
Your career
The honest picture, before the plans
1
Start with your visa, not your CVMost partners enter India on a dependent visa. It protects your right to live here with your family; it does not permit employment in India. Nothing useful can be planned until you know your exact visa position, so make that the first conversation with your consultant, before you commit to anything.
2
A job in India means your own employment visaWorking for an Indian employer needs your own employment visa, sponsored by that employer and normally applied for from outside India, with salary thresholds attached to most roles. It is a real route that real partners take; it simply needs to be planned as its own project. Your consultant maps the steps for your nationality and field.
3
Remote work for an overseas employerMany partners keep a role with an employer back home and work remotely from India. It can work well, and it touches visa and tax questions that depend on your situation, including Indian tax residency once you spend most of the year here. Take advice from a qualified tax adviser and loop in your employer before you rely on it; your consultant can point you to the right adviser.
4
Study, upskill, certifyOnline degrees and professional certifications travel with you and need no special permission. Formal enrolment at an Indian institution usually needs a student visa, while short courses and workshops are generally open. A Hindi class does double duty: a skill, and a weekly room full of people in exactly your situation.
5
Volunteering, with eyes openGiving time is one of the fastest ways to belong. Informal community involvement, your society, the school, is always open to you. Formal roles with organisations can touch visa rules, so check with your consultant before committing to a structured position.
6
If this is a pause, make it a chapterSome partners choose the pause, and the ones who feel best about it write the story on purpose: what these years are for, the profile kept alive, the network warm, a re-entry point pencilled in. A deliberate sabbatical reads as strength on any CV. Drift is the only version that hurts.
The first 90 days
The arc, told honestly
1
Weeks 1 and 2: let logistics carry youEverything is new, the to-do list is long, and adrenaline does most of the work. Enjoy it, and do not judge India or yourself yet; nobody’s real life looks like their first fortnight.
2
Around weeks 4 to 6: the dip is normalThe boxes are unpacked, the novelty thins, home feels far away, and the assignee is suddenly busy. Almost every relocating family knows this dip, and it lands hardest on the partner, because you are the one building from scratch. Name it out loud, tell each other, tell your consultant. Named, it passes; unnamed, it festers.
3
One anchor a dayThe single best predictor of a good week is one fixed thing in the diary every weekday: a class, a walk group, a standing coffee, the gym. Build the scaffolding before you need it, ideally in week one, so the dip arrives to find your calendar already full.
4
By day 90: home is where the routines areYou will know your fruit seller, your auto route, your people, your places. Look back at week one and notice how much of this city your family built. That is worth celebrating properly, together.
Your people
Community is built, not found
1
Start inside your own gateYour society is a village: the residents’ WhatsApp group, festival committees, morning walkers, kids everywhere. Join the group the week you move in and say yes to the first invitation, whatever it is.
2
The school gate is the fastest network in IndiaIf you have children, the school run will hand you a social circle within a month: parents in exactly your situation, plus the class WhatsApp group. Show up in person while the newness is your excuse to introduce yourself.
3
Use the expat infrastructureThe big metros have deep expat communities: InterNations chapters, Meetup groups, city and neighbourhood expat forums, country-specific clubs. Your consultant knows which ones our families in your city actually rate, and will make the first introduction.
4
Your country’s own networkChambers of commerce, business councils and consulate communities run regular mixers and family events, and they are open to partners, not just employees. They are also quietly the best professional networking available to you here.
5
Classes are friendship machines, on the three-tries ruleLanguage, cooking, yoga, tennis, pottery: a weekly class is how adults make friends. And give everything three tries before deciding it is not for you; nothing feels like yours the first time, in any country.
Daily life
Your toolkit, in this pack
Independence is settling. Your own phone number, your own money, your own way around: aim to have all three working in your first fortnight, so daily life never has to wait for anyone. The rest of this pack does the how, and these are the chapters partners reach for most:
The partner’s shelf · where to look things up
Your home, running
Setting Up Your Home and Hiring Household Help, the two that buy your week back
Money of your own
Money & Banking, UPI and your own card or account, so you never carry the “can you pay for this?” feeling
Health, sorted calmly
Healthcare in India plus Your Emergency Card, filled in for every family member
The kids’ school
Schools & Admissions, the search that decides your neighbourhood
Getting around
Driving & Your Licence, including the case for a driver while everything is new
The kids’ move
Settling children, honestly
1
Routines first, everything else secondBedtimes, meals and the school-run rhythm, rebuilt in the first fortnight, are what tell a child’s nervous system that home moved with them. The furniture can wait; the rhythm cannot.
2
Let them miss the old lifeMoving is an adventure and a loss at the same time, and children, especially teenagers, need permission to feel both. Keep the old friendships alive on video calls without guilt; they fade into the background naturally as the new life fills in.
3
School is the settling engineSay yes to the birthday parties, host the first playdate, join the class group. A child with two friends is a settled child, and the fastest route to those two friends runs straight through your own yes.
4
Give them both worldsKeep your home traditions loudly alive, and let India in: Diwali at your society, Holi with the neighbours, mangoes in summer. Children who grow up holding both cultures settle deepest, here and in every move after.
Visiting parents
When your parents come to stay
1
The visa, before the flightsFor most nationalities a tourist e-visa, applied for online before they fly, is the route. The right variant depends on their nationality and how long they will stay, so have your consultant confirm it before anyone books tickets.
2
The guest formalityForeign nationals staying under your roof come under the same Form C reporting that covered your own arrival. It is a small filing, and your consultant will run it with you, so a knock on the door never becomes a worry.
3
Pick the season kindlyOctober to February is the gentlest window for most of India: festive, green and cool. Peak summer heat and the monsoon are harder work for older visitors, so if the dates are flexible, choose the kind months.
4
Prepare for their health, quietlyTravel insurance that genuinely covers their age, medications for the full stay in original packaging, an unhurried itinerary, and a printed copy of Your Emergency Card in their daypack. Then relax and show them your new city.
The partnership
Protect the two of you
1
A standing weekly check-inOne walk or dinner a week, phones down, with the same two questions: what is working, what is not. Twenty minutes of this prevents the conversation nobody wants to have in month six.
2
Name the imbalance before it becomes resentmentThe move visibly serves one career. Agree together what it serves in your shared plan, the savings, the adventure, the experience for the kids, whose turn is next, and revisit that agreement out loud whenever it stops feeling true.
3
Asking for more help is strengthIf the dip stays past the dip, use what is already yours: the employer’s assistance programme if one exists, and good English-speaking counselling, which the metros do have. Your consultant can point you to it, discreetly and without drama. Families that ask early settle; it is the quiet ones that struggle.
Your support
What IKAN does for you
We counsel the family, not just the assignee: you are in the briefings from day one, and your questions are never the extra ones
Settling-in support covers your life, not just the lease: home, help, healthcare, schools, done with you, not for someone else
We make the first community introductions: the groups, classes and circles our families in your city actually recommend
Before you commit to work, study or a formal volunteering role, we check the visa position first, so plans are built on solid ground
Your consultant answers the tenth small question as warmly as the first, in your own phone, not routed through anyone’s office
The partner’s first quarter · one-screen check
Visa position understood before any work, study or volunteering commitment
Phone, money and transport of your own working in the first fortnight
One anchor in the diary for every weekday, set up in week one
Two community threads pulled this month: one class, one group
Kids’ routines rebuilt in the first fortnight, school circle joined
The weekly check-in standing in both calendars, and your consultant’s number saved in your phone
The assignment that thrives is the one where the whole family lands. Take your time, take your place in this city, and take the help. It was always meant for you too.
Your IKAN Relocations team