Part A
Most companies these days strive towards diversifying their portfolios. They try to enter new markets either via creating a new brand or via acquisition. No company in my opinion has managed to do that better than Aditya Birla Group. Every subsidiary they have has touched my life in a major way but none more so than their Fashion and Retail Brands . I love the feel of dressing up and wearing a good shirt and as I dug deeper and deeper into ABG group I realised most of favourite brands like Louis Philippe, Allen Solly, Van Heusen and Peter England are in-house brands of the ABG group. They have revolutionised the way shopping is done in the apparel industry by the creation of Pantaloons and the acquisition of Forever 21. These have ensured that there is a one stop shop for anything apparel. I do the majority of shopping for my friends and myself from pantaloons and I have a younger sister for whom Forever 21 is like a second home.
I would like to conclude by saying researching for this made me realise how a brand can diversify into a variety of verticals and still manage to be at the top in each of the sectors if the upper management takes the right decisions. ABG is therefore more than just a brand, it is love.
Part B
My tryst with destiny
I have had a few moments when I have been proud of myself and this was definitely one of them and probably the first one. The year was 2004, I was in class 7 and I was moving schools as my father was in a transferrable job. I moved to a new school called National Public School in Bengaluru which at that time was known for its academic rigour. My father was doing a course which required him to spend 2 months in the US and my parents decided that it would be a good exposure for me to join them on the trip. It was hard to convince the principal to give me almost 45 days off , but my father was never one to give up easily and his persistence paid off when she let me go for the trip. So post October I was in the US with my parents and came back to school just before Christmas. I came back to school after the whole experience which actually made me realise the world is so much more than what we dare to imagine. I came back to school and promised my teachers that I will make up for the classes I missed in the Christmas break. It started off well. I was on track to completing my favourite subjects Maths and Science in the first 3 days of vacations. After seeing my progress I decided to join my aunt who is a Christian to Kerala for Christmas along with my sister and my mom to celebrate christmas the traditional way and I carried my books along. The festival itself was beautiful . We had a nice meal and slept early on Christmas day. The next morning we had breakfast early in the morning and left for a nearby beach called Cherail beach. We strolled around lazily from 10 am to almost 12 pm. Then we could see a lot of police on the beach and there were red tapes near the shoreline . We had heard that the waves are unusually rough that day and it could be because of an earthquake in Indonesia. So we moved to the edge of the beach. The only building behind was an under construction building and the road beyond that. We opened up our food and started enjoying it and eating the food. Then post that we kids were roaming aroud on the beach and collecting oysters hoping to find pearls in one of them! At about 1:13 pm one wave looked unusually different from anything we had seen that day and we all stared at it hoping that it wud reach us at the end of the beach. As it came closer we couldn’t believe what we were seeing , as it came closer it became higher and higher and we looked upto it scared out of our minds. We turned around to see that the gate of building behind us was locked and we held onto it. When it finally touched ground, it felt like a force I had never felt. We broke past the door and the windows of the building and I still remember the room full of water around me. I finally landed beyond the restaurant on the road . The waves receded and my first thought was it is flood. I need to find my family. I looked around and I could see my sister and my mom and then I found my aunt and everything else seemed secondary. All of us were bleeding profusely. My cuts were more visible however my sister’s cut were more deep. To my mother’s shock I was still holding on to that oyster packet without even realising it. We reached the car and found it to be displaced to the other side of the road. The first thing we did when we got to the hospital was call and inform my father who was in Bangalore watching the news. In the hospital we all got minor stitches and my sister underwent an operation. After that crazy day when I got back home I realised that I had 5 days left and a lot of work to be done. We watched the news that night and realised what we had been through is called a tsunami and tried to learn how it is caused. I tried to comfort everyone , however grave the mood was by talking about other topics. We had a really heavy meal, sang songs together and in that day we realised how much of a healing effect just being around other people is. We saw blood in the water while running upto the car and we read abt the number of causalities on that beach and pondered how easily that could have been one of us. Somehow we put ourselves to sleep. The next morning I got up and looked at the amount of work pending , still not completely believing what we had been through. I talked to my father and he inspired me to go for it and finish the work rather than giving an excuse which would have been more than enough reason to not complete the work. I sat day and night through the mental and physical pain and I finished the work. One January 2nd when my teachers saw my leg and hands and scratches on my head they were shocked and when I told them how it had happened it was almost beyond belief. They saw the work that I had put in to complete the work and asked me to give a speech at the assembly about my journey. I went from being a new kid in the school to a man who fought the Tsunami and didn’t let it hold him down. Even to this day sometimes I feel low and feel that something is too hard to try, but I look at those bag full of oysters and it inspires me to push myself beyond what I can be.I always believe that what you experience is not in your hands but how you take it is what defines you!
