“We are improving our business management systems to prepare us for the transformation of our businesses to a two-degree world”
- Tony Henshaw
Chief Sustainability Officer
Aditya Birla Group
Since 1800, following the discovery of penicillin and the industrial revolution, the population of the planet has grown exponentially. Today, it stands at 7,000,000,000 people and is forecast to reach 9 billion by 2050. The Aditya Birla Group has employees of 42 different nationalities working in 34 countries. The Group reaches out to 7.5 million people across geographies.
Scientists have discovered that mankind's actions are now pushing the planet's systems into unsafe territories. It will be difficult to continue to grow our economies without limitations, because at some point, the planet will not be able to continue to support our activities. Many people say that this time has already passed, and we are using resources and degrading nature to an extent that the planet's natural systems may not be able to recover from.
Critical areas include those that are associated with biodiversity loss, and the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. Climate and land system changes are fast becoming critical, while all key planetary systems are continuing to move further out of control. The management of these systems, such that they remain intact and capable of supporting human life, is the basis of the need for Sustainable Development. The sum total of mankind's actions are represented by the impact caused by business operations, because it is through businesses that the majority of products and services are provided. Thus, contributing to a sustainable future becomes the goal for businesses, because they cannot thrive on a planet that is failing.
To return to the limits of the planet, Aditya Birla Group is moving towards planet’s safe operating limit by setting self-decided sufficiently restrictive control the cumulative impact by the ABG.
In areas such as the production of greenhouse gases, notably CO2, biodiversity management, nitrogen use, water management, land use, safety and health management, businesses will have to introduce greater levels of management control, over time. By doing so, they will increase and standardise performance in these areas. In many cases, reduction will not suffice, and a complete transformation to new technologies or new methods will be required. This is especially true of the energy matrix, where reduction in the use of energy can only go so far towards reducing CO2, before new fossil fuel-free sources of energy must be introduced to our energy mix.
To reach the population by the means of sustainability, ABG’s various businesses has started sustainability initiative taking from Ultratech, Idea, Birla Carbon, Chemicals, Fertilizers, Insulators, Hindalco, Financial Services etc.
The Journey of Achieving The Greatest Ambition Continues
The greatest ambition in life so far was to be the student at India’s top b-school. This ambition was decided as the path to become the most influential personality at some point of time in future. And this most influential personality of a corporate company as per my understanding lead to become the CEO of a company. The path to become CEO goes through being a management student from India’s top b-school. Having dream of this in std. 10th, I decided to do the MBA post engineering also. And as the popularity of MBA post engineering increased from 2010, the dream fulfilment effort went on increasing day-by-day. I completed Mechanical engineering from MSU, Baroda and joined Tata Technologies as Developer PLM. One fine day the burning desire to join the b-school again ignited and the efforts to score the percentile in CAT, clearing the interview took almost 5 months of hard work. This hard work was done post 11 PM after returning from company and it used to go till 3 AM in the morning. The support from my colleagues, flat mates was main motivating factor that lend me at the gate of IIM in July 2018.
Persistence is what keeps one going in the time of struggle, and pays the effort of consistent hard work at the time of result.
The journey to be the most influential personality at some point of time in future is still continue and I hope that I will overcome all the challenges as I did in the past to reach the greatest ambition in my life.