Why Aditya Birla Group Is Big In Your Life:
According to Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens, human beings live in a dual reality: Objective Reality and Fictional Reality. Fictional Reality includes things that exist only in our collective imagination. For example, the concept of Nations, money, corporations, etc. And over time, fictional reality has become so powerful and important that the very survival of humans and objective reality depends on this collective imagination.
Aditya Birla Group, a US $44.3 billion corporations and a premium global conglomerate spanning 34 countries, is one of the very few organizations that has captured this collective imagination and which has had a huge impact on the lives of its customers. And I am no different. From my childhood, I have seen and used many products/ services of ABG without realizing that all of them fall under the ABG umbrella. My association with ABG began with More supermarkets. Being the only child, I was always the one to bring the groceries as and when needed, from the nearby Kirana store. And when a More supermarket came near my house, I was fascinated by the sheer size and varieties of groceries offered by More. From then on, I used to visit the More supermarket, even if that meant I had to ride on my bicycle for about a KM. Those memories of riding on a cycle and hanging the groceries bags on my cycle's handle are still fresh. My next association with ABG was through Idea Cellular. My father's mobile phone had an Idea Cellular sim card. And around that time, a series of ads under the campaign "What an Idea Sirji!" was advertised. Those ads struck an emotional chord with the audience, including me. And whenever I saw those ads, I used to feel great for having an Idea sim card.
Even today, ABG continues to be relevant and very much part of everyone's life; be it through Fashion Brands like Pantaloons, Peter England, Van Heusen, and Louis Philippe, or Financials Services like Aditya Birla Capital and BHIM ABPB. These companies are just the tip of the iceberg, and the tag line "Big in your Life" describes aptly the vast business empire that Aditya Birla Group has grown into. Its roots are so deeply entrenched in the lives and livelihoods of the millions of people it has served through its innovative products and services, that ABG can be called "The Innovation Enabler" of the Globalised World.
How Have You Made An Impact:
What happens when a person who hasn't taken any calculated risks in his life takes one in order to achieve his goal. And what happens when it backfires.
Well, this was pretty much what happened in my life. Although I was sure I wanted to pursue an MBA after engineering, I joined an IT firm to gain experience. I and my classmates were asked to work in Quality Assurance domain because we were from ECE. And while I tried to give my best and was good at my job, I didn't like the kind of work I was doing. It felt as if I wasn't doing anything worthwhile. So I decided to call it quits and prepare for CAT in order to achieve my goal.
Honestly speaking, I gave my everything for the preparation but the results weren't favorable and I couldn't make it into any of the Top 15 B-Schools. And the only person whom I can blame for the debacle was myself. CAT being the most important exam and I having quit a well paid and stable job, my own thoughts and fears made me into a desperate aspirant. And on the D-Day, I lost my cool in the DI section of the exam because of which I couldn't solve a set of 4 questions. That made a huge difference. Few minutes of lack of calm and composure ruined a potential opportunity and cost me another year.
Although I had converted a few B Schools, I instead chose to join an IOT Analytics Start-up in Finance and Supply Chain role so as to gain first-hand experience in the field I was passionate about. In spite of being from an Engineering background, I could make into a Finance role because by then I had given the CFA Level 1 exam and also cleared it. This opened up opportunities and boosted my confidence too. I got to learn a lot during my stint with this startup; experience and insights which are difficult to acquire in big organizations. But working in a startup meant I was occupied until late evenings. So I had only a couple of hours in the mornings, during the weekdays and Sundays to prepare for the exam.
Also, this time around, I did not want to repeat the same mistake again. So I worked on myself and learned to control my nerves by imagining scenarios where I could screw up on the D-Day. This is one thing, I believe, helped me a lot in my preparation.
Now that I look back, I had walked a tight rope and although there are many things that I could have done differently and could have avoided few mistakes, I am glad that I am here, at MDI Gurgaon, one of the Best B-Schools of our country.
So has the calculated risk that I had taken paid off? I would like to believe that it has. But then, you never know. Had I continued in my first company, the journey to MBA could have been different and maybe even quicker. But then, you will never know. That's the beauty of it.