Ultratech Cement - There are few companies whose products you have been using for some time but you don’t even remember when you started using them. Aditya Birla Group products are one among those. The closest one I can remember is our contractor using Ultratech cement during construction of our house in 2000. This was probably the first time I heard this name, and started noticing it. Then I saw it on bill boards, compound walls, TV advertisements and many other places. Eventually it turned out that my first industrial visit happened in one of those Ultratech plants which was in Ariyallur. My friend’s father used to work there and we got to visit the plant for 3 days. It totally brought a new perspective into me on how factories and machineries work in real life.
Apparels - A blue colored Peter England shirt was one of my favorite shirt during childhood. Even though I knew about other brands like Allen Solly and Louis Philippe, little did I know that the same apparel company owns all these brands. It was a big shock to me and I was the first one in my friends group who knew about this. I still remember telling it to my friends and getting that shocking looks from their eyes. For us these three were competing companies and their names gave us an intuition that they were foreign brands. Then we took turns in visiting each brand whenever we went for shopping. But surprisingly all of us have different favorite brands. For me it is Allen Solly and I have been a regular customer for more than 8 years now.
One of the biggest challenge in my life happened while I was in my second year of my engineering college. Being in college and enjoying that freedom, I took few things lightly and eventually it turned out as something that I have never experienced before. I failed in one of the subjects during term three, this was something that never happened to me before and I was shocked to see the results. I never thought something like this will happen to me and neither did my family. I was terrified about showing my results to my parents. But I knew what I had to do and promised them that this will be the last time something like this will ever happen from my side. After that the next five semesters my grades went from 7.24 to 8.86. It has always been a positive slope and not a single drop from that. By doing all these I never missed any chance to participate in any extra-curricular activities. I was always active in sports. This is when I realized that the attitude and intent is the only thing that matters. With the right amount of these two things you can achieve whatever you want. No matter what all things you have to do in life, you will always find time for things that you really want to do.
Advaith S Aji
TAPMI