Why Aditya Birla Group Is Big In Your Life?
There is significant importance of firsts in one’s life. For me, Aditya Birla Group has been part of delightful and memorable firsts. Whether it was my first set of Louis Philippe formals for my undergraduate placements, a People t-shirt bought with my first salary, or a Van Heusen suit for my B-school interview. ABG has always been there to provide me with the means to equip myself for an upcoming challenge and looking sharp and presentable while I am at it.
But I have a deeper history with ABG. This goes back to the year 2009. I am a teenage kid in class 9th who after 3 months of extreme persuasion has finally convinced his parents to give him a personal phone. But what good is a phone without a good connection? On that accord, my parents got me an Idea SIM. I still remember the joy I experienced when my phone rang for the first time. In retrospect, I realize that life’s greatest pleasures are in the simplest of things. Fast-forwarding to 2011, I am in class 11th and akin to boys that age, I have developed this fondness for a fellow classmate. But living in a small city brings with it its own set of operational challenges, namely choosing a non-intrusive place to meet. In what is perhaps the most unconventional advantage of Pantaloons, the multi-storeyed store provided me with a judgment-free zone to interact with the person in concern. I visited the store multiple times without making any purchase but no one in the store ever questioned my purpose of visit. Years later when I think about this event, I realize that this is what ABG stands for. Yes, it stands for integrity, commitment, and passion but for me, ABG personifies relations beyond transactions. Till date, I truly believe, the connections that I have formed in both professional and personal capacity stems from the opportunity I got at Pantaloons to interact in a judgment-free zone. Today, Pantaloons is my one-stop favorite shopping destination for all things clothing!
How Have You Made An Impact?
“Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.” A truer line couldn’t have been said by author and theologian C.S. Lewis. Personally, I have failed and multiple times at that. Some key failures in my 25 years of life would include not getting an undergraduate college of my choice, facing rejection by five core companies during final year placement, failing to secure a job of my liking, missing out on the cut-off percentile for colleges in CAT and having to go through the preparation process again, etc. And while I knew that failure is the key to success, repeated failures had almost broken my otherwise confident and optimistic spirit. Now while all this failure might sound disheartening, it certainly builds perseverance and character. Every failure would force me into analyzing the reasons behind it. Some pointed me to work hard but more often than not it made me introspect as to why I got into a particular race in the first place. Here I am reminded of a famous quote by Albert Einstein where he says “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” I believe the very essence of failure is trying to discover yourself. How do you succeed, if you don’t know what you are good at? A deeper understanding of my failures told me that I was a fish trying to climb a tree my entire life. This self-realization led me to take a drastic step and I decided to quit my job and try and answer the question “What is it that I really want in life?” This introspection allowed me to take control of the reins of my life in terms of the work that I do and I believe is key to whatever small success I have amounted till date in the form of landing at a dream B-school. All that being said, I know I will fail again. I know the risks will be higher. But I am ready to take on the challenges now. I am driven by Kumar Mangalam Birla’s mantra that “Failure is not fatal, it is inevitable..... But the key is to not be oblivious to the mistake.”