A home away from home

“Where are all the people?”

Sarang grew up in Sambhajinagar in India, where he studied computer science engineering. He worked for the multiple IT consultancies in Mumbai and Pune before a Jotun project brought him to Sandefjord. His first impression of Sandefjord was a simple question: where are all the people?

“Back in Pune, I worked in an office built for 40 000 people,” Sarang says with a laugh. “That was about the same as the whole population of Sandefjord at the time.”

When the project ended, Sarang and his family decided to stay in Sandefjord. He joined Jotun permanently and is now a solution owner in the global IT department. “In simple terms, I help build and manage the applications that support our sales and related processes,” he explains.

47 different nationalities under one roof

Sarang says the constant through the past twelve years has been the support from his colleagues. Jotun has nearly 11 000 employees around the world. At the head office alone, 47 nationalities are represented. For Sarang, that is a big part of why the town felt less foreign than he expected.

It also means help is never far away. He still turns to colleagues with everyday questions. Recently, he fixed a dishwasher for the first time in Norway and had to call a colleague halfway through. “Without my colleagues, I wouldn’t have survived here,” he says, laughing.  

Building community

Today, Sarang is one of the more experienced international colleagues at Jotun’s headquarters. He is happy to share what he has learned with new arrivals. And there is one piece of advice he gives every time: “Make sure your family settles in too.”

The advice comes from experience. Sarang knows how much the feeling of belonging matters for him and his family. That is one of the reasons why he is active in the Indian community in Sandefjord and Oslo.

At Christmas, he and others visit care homes in Sandefjord with coffee, waffles and handmade cards. He also helps organise Indian culture evenings. Everyone is welcome, whether they are Indian, Norwegian or from other nationalities. Outside the community work, he plays floorball with colleagues, a sport he had never tried before moving to Norway, and he cheers on his oldest son at football matches.

“We live here, so it is our community now,” Sarang says. “The more you get involved, the more you feel that you belong, and we do belong in Sandefjord now.”