Part A
Do you know why Aditya Birla Group is big in my life? Neither do I. Maybe it’s because, when I think about Adithya Birla Group, I don’t think of it as a big conglomerate of business India, rather I think of a company that fills my everyday life in various different ways.
Maybe it’s because the first thing I look after waking up is my mobile and my day starts with the
idea cellular logo in it. Or maybe because, the shirt I wear after shower is
Peter England. Or maybe because, the roof under I live is built from
UltraTech Cement. Or maybe it’s because the insurance that protects me and my family is from
Birla Insurance Advisory. Or maybe it’s because the company that secures my fund is
Aditya Birla Capital. Or maybe it’s because my girlfriend’s favorite apparel shopping destination is
Pantaloons. Or maybe it’s because the farm land I grew up with and the crops there are healthy from
Grasim’s fertilizers, or maybe it’s because the payments I make all day is from the
ABPB app. Or maybe it’s simply because the chapati that my mom makes me everyday is wrapped from
Hindalco Aluminum. I truly don’t know which of these makes that connection with me and Aditya Birla group. Maybe it’s all of them combined, maybe it’s none of them. I might never know. One can give 1000 reasons to hate something, but to love something, it’s not that easy after all. Whatever it is, all I can say for sure is, just like millions, my life is filled with ABG every day, everywhere.
Part B
My love for business and management started when I was 17, but I didn’t realize it back then. I was in my dad’s farm land, watching field workers harvesting sugarcane on one side and my dad having an intense conversation with the contractor for the price. That day when I asked my dad, why did we incur loss, he told me, “Son, wages of labor are huge in seasons, and around 75% cost goes to labor. That eats away all our margin” he said. I sat all night that day and was trying to come up with ways and techniques to make the operation of harvesting better. Naturally I thought the solution lies in engineering, I thought engineering is something I would love. I wanted to invent a machine that does the work thus reducing the cost. I failed and decided to do mechanical engineering as a major to learn how. Fast forward 4 years, I was able to do the very same thing that I wanted 4 years ago. But for some reason, it didn’t quite work out. The machine worked, but the solution didn’t. The cost didn’t go down. My dad was happy that I was able to achieve what I wanted and I worked hard for 4 years and learnt a lot. But I wasn’t happy. I should have been. Afterall I invented something at the age of 21. But I wasn’t happy. Only then I realized that my fascination was not in the machine but in the cost optimization. I read few books, thought about it a lot and then I decided to work on a 2
nd solution for the same problem. Nearly 5 years later. But this time, the solution was not in tech, but in management. I convinced my dad to make few changes. I studied the process in detail and came up with few methods to streamline the process. I increased the spacing at the cost of yield quantity per acre (to make it machine compatible), bought automatic saws, employed workers in contract for pay per ton rather than per day. And voila, the whole work got completed in 2 days instead of usual 20 days. I didn’t make profit that year, in fact I made a loss because of automatic machineries and others. But I was happy. I developed a system that when scaled will give me more profit. But I didn’t scale up the system. I let my dad do it. I left my home. I joined an IT company. Why you ask? I was preparing. I decided, my love is in managing and making things profitable. I earned by working in the morning for my future education. Studied in night. 3 years later, I was able to crack CAT. Now, here I am. In IIM Raipur, studying what I love, learning things that excite me, getting ready to change the world. Hello World! Be ready. I’m coming to change everything that I see.