It was a lazy Monday afternoon at work. I could hear the clock ticking, a faint the buzz of the fax machine in the nearby room, my colleagues laughing away in the cafeteria whiling away time. There were only a couple of hours left and then it was time to go home.
I sat here thinking to myself,” Is this what I want to do?”I had worked hard the whole morning on my project. To the world, I was an R&D Engineer, but only I knew that there was no real engineering going on down here. It was just a whole lot of Excel sheets and mails. I had learned nothing new since joining here and was just living from paycheck to paycheck.
Pingggg!!! It was a Youtube notification on my Phone. It was a video update from my Favourite vlogger, but before the video could begin I had to go through a three-minute ad. Since I had all the time in the world, I decided not to skip it and watch it through till the end. It was a Loius Phillipe Ad titled Rise above the rest. a cinematic Hollywood level video about a president standing up for what he felt was right. This was one of the very few ads that managed to give me the goosebumps. I didn’t watch the vlog at all, I just replayed the Ad 3 more times. With the new dosage of endorphins in my brain I started introspecting myself on my way back home.
“What is it that I stood for?” “Was I doing the things that I wanted to do in life?” a hundred other questions were asked and pondered upon. That night I finally made a decision that I was going to take a step forward. I was going to pursue my dreams.
Two things that came to my mind were entrepreneurship and my interest in Softskills and public speaking. Coming to think of it now, The Aditya Birla group has played an important part in both these interests of mine. I used to do a good number of stage shows in college and was well known for putting up a good show when it came to dramatics and public speaking. Now that I was out of college, I couldn't perform much but I used to stay in touch with my juniors. When speaking with one of them, the topic of placements came up. The junior was telling me how it was to get a job these days and on top of that many students in our college were lacking the communication skills to get through the interview rounds. This troubled me a lot so I decided to do something about it. The next day I got in touch with the English department of my university and asked if I could assist them in helping the students with their communication skills. After a series of meetings with the college authorities. I was finally permitted to start a club in college as part of alumni activities and bring in speakers and trainers to help students in a very specific set of skills. As placements were fast approaching, the schedule was very tight and I had to go to the office get done with my work, then go to the airport to receive the guest speaker of the day and then spend 5 hours in college training my juniors. It was important that I prepare the content for each day and it was also important that I looked the part. We were teaching soft skills to the students and needed to set an example on dressing etiquette as well. The series of elegant shirts from Peter England came to my rescue. A day didn’t go by without me receiving a compliment about my shirts. After two grueling weeks, the event came to an end. It was a huge success and managed to garner huge support from all the stakeholders and I managed to look presentable through it all without much sleep or rest thanks to those classy Peter England shirts. I still feel so satisfied when I get calls from my juniors telling me they have got placed in their dream companies. I am very grateful that I was able to impact their lives a some small way
So wondering if I ever pursued that entrepreneurial dream, You bet I did, I started working on weekends with a Manufacturing startup, It was an MSME and was in its initial stages of growth.
The business was good and we were getting a lot of orders but we couldn't fulfill them, we were in dire need of new machines but didn’t have the capital to invest in them. Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank Limited was the first to sanction our loan which enabled us to invest in equipment and move on to bigger contracts. The business is running successfully till date but I have moved out of it,
I am devising something of my own now I am pretty sure The Aditya Birla Group will play an integral part in some way to help me realize that dream.