GRCs were introduced in India in 1973 by Gouranga Chattopadhyay who was instrumental in organizing a series of working conferences and other learning events in the period 1973-1991, with IIM Calcutta, where he worked as a professor, being a key sponsor of conferences. He continued to direct Conferences in the subsequent years with different sponsors, which were offered intermittently throughout the 90s. In this phase of development of group relations in India, Zahid Hussain Gangjee and Dipankar Banerjee, also Kolkata based, played key roles staffing and facilitating the sponsoring of conferences and workshops, contributing in important ways to the body of knowledge and practise of GR in India. While this is not a detailed history of group relations’ trajectory in India, mention must also be made of MM Kumaraswamy who led social sector focussed organisations Aikya and SHSD, which sponsored several conferences. 

A series of international conferences, sponsored by Business World and other corporate and academic institutions between 2005 and 2008 had the title Managing transformation of self & organization in a globalized economy (2005, 2006, 2008). From 2006 onwards, a series of conferences sponsored by Human and Institutional Development Forum (HIDF) with social themes such as Gender and Authority were also offered.

In parallel, Rosemary Viswanath worked on her conviction that it was critical to build an institution in India that would exclusively focus on Group Relations frameworks and their application in multiple contexts. This became a reality in 2013 when GRI was registered as a Trust, with Rosemary Viswanath as the Managing Trustee and Anuradha Prasad, Ivo Rodrigues, and Gouranga Chattopadhyay as Trustees. Current trustees are Aditi Chanchani, Anuradha Prasad, Ganesh Anantharaman and Rosemary Viswanath.