ADITYA BIRLA GROUP – THE GAME CHANGER IN THE LIVES OF COMMON MEN - TAPMI

When asked to write about how ‘Aditya Birla Group made an impact in your life’, I am forced to digress and instead describe how ‘Aditya Birla Group made an impact in the lives of a huge population, and still continues to do so...’. Despite being a consumer of many products of the Aditya Birla Group (like being a loyal customer of Pantaloons since my teens and being in a family which has always resorted to Birla products for house construction and renovation), I had never realised its value in mine and others’ lives until about two years ago. This happened a few months after I joined my first company – Skillveri Training Solutions, a social enterprise in Chennai, which manufactures simulators for Skill Training. I was to go to a client site in Gummidipoondi (Chennai) – LabourNet Skill Training Centre - where one of our welding simulators was sold for training purposes. Upon reaching there, I interacted with many students and staff members about the impact of simulator in their training process, their feedback and opinions. It was during this conversation, that I came to know that the students in the centre were trained for free! During my pre-research about the client, I had known that the simulator and the centre itself was sponsored by the biggest conglomerate in India – The Aditya Birla group. But paying LabourNet for the training of each student in the centre was unbelievable by the common CSR standards of corporates. Adding to this, the students in the training centre, considering their social and financial backgrounds, would never have had the opportunity to learn such hard skills with the help of latest technology state-of-the-art equipment unless they were being sponsored. The level of confidence and self-belief it provided to the students was evident from my conversation with students. With an initial shock turning into disbelief turning into immense respect, I learnt, on that day, the genuineness and the true purpose of ABG behind their CSR activities and Skill Foundation. My inquisitiveness staying with me even after leaving the site made me collect further information about the 15-member batch after they left the centre, post training. “The impact of paying Rs. 3000 per month for each student, for a period of 3 months, was that all 15 of them got jobs that paid them atleast Rs. 15,000 per month” – I still remember the trainer’s pride when he said this! And the biggest impact it made in my life – Motivation – to become a motivation for others!