ABG operates in multiple verticals such as cements, branded apparels, chemicals & fertilisers, financial services, telecommunication, and IT services to name a few. Hence, you have to be living under a rock if you have never used a product by ABG in your life.
Personally, I have engaged consistently with multiple products from ABG and aluminium foils for food wrapping by FreshWrapp since I started going to school or buying clothing apparels from Peter England and Van Heusen are a few of them.
However, the biggest impact that ABG provided in my life is through Peter England. To elaborate on it further, I wanted to purchase a formal suit for my interview processes but was not able to find one which ticked both boxes of quality as well as affordability, and since being in undergrad I relied on my personal savings only it was a huge issue for me as I had a limited budget but also did not want to compromise on quality because in interview processes all the details matter. And this is where Peter England came in and saved the way by offering suit of similar quality at 50 percent of the price and this also made me their loyal customer. This event did not by any stretch of imagination have a life changing impact on me but only an incremental one. But in life, usually these small incremental impacts and changes only collectively creates a huge impact.
Furthermore, I am also inspired by ABG’s contribution to education as part of its CSR policy by educating around 46,000 students along with providing basic education utilities and it fuels me to contribute more and more towards the same, which leads to my next point
I am passionate about the cause of education, and specifically educating the underprivileged kids in India as education can provide a platform of opportunities to them which can not only improve their quality of life but also make them well informed individuals who can forge their own path.
Hence, I have volunteered at Teach for India in my undergrad which was an extremely satisfying and fulfilling experience. However, it also left me wanting to contribute more towards the cause which I could not do due to a few reasons, all of it on my part.
But last year I associated with Youth For Seva (Hyderabad), where volunteers work together to contribute towards some of the social issues that India is facing, one of which was educating underprivileged kids in India. I worked with National Means-Cum-Merit Scholarship team which worked towards preparing 7th and 8th standard students of low income group family (less than INR 1,00,000 per annum) for the test to avail a scholarship of INR 24,000 distributed over 16 quarters. This may look like a small amount but it contributed to at least 6 percent saving to each household.
Coming to the process, it was challenging as well as extremely rewarding. The challenging part was you are responsible for the performance of the students and at the same time you don’t have complete control over it. Some of the other challenges were ensuring each individual really understood what is really taught in the class and not just pretended so (like most of us do), ensuring student is performing appropriate amount of self-study, ensuring students are comfortable enough to ask any doubt but not too comfortable to disrupt the decorum, and that no student is left behind.
The steps that I executed to tackle the above obstacles were instead of merely asking students whether they understood a particular topic rather make them solve the problems on the board which makes the student more attentive in the class and also helps them learn from the mistakes of their peers, rewarding students in terms of chocolates/ sweets which increased the engagement level of students in the classroom, understanding where each student is struggling and giving customised homework which not only addresses the needs of each student effectively but also provides them with well directed self-study plan.
However, apart from all this what really helped me was the sincerity in my efforts which the students could also see due to which they trusted me and hence put on the efforts from their side. Without this sincerity all the above approaches might not have been effective.
As a result 6 students out of 14 from my classroom were able to secure this scholarship which I count as my biggest achievement because it created a positive impact not only in my life (or my personal circle) but in the lives of others also.