ABG - A Brand Of Every Class Of People - Vipin Kumar, IIM Sirmaur

Advertisement on the homepage of adityabirla.com sums up how Aditya Birla Group is connected with our lives (If someone has not seen it, they must see the ads. It actually builds dreams). Aditya Birla group is the company whose product we use on daily basis in some way or the other (what do I mean by others is for example ABG is large producer of carbon black and cement which are respectively used to make insulators, tires, roads and buildings) vary from variety of sectors including fashion, cement, chemicals, telecom to financial services. We use idea-Vodafone network as well as pantaloons products. It is the brand of every class of people as pantaloons provide discount clothes to idea–Vodafone providing easy call rates and premium products like Allen Solly and Van Heusen. This company is one of the largest and oldest conglomerates in India starting from 1857. It definitely change lives in India as India is an economy of low per capita income people so providing low cost and quality products definitely change lives. Van Heusen, Allen Solly, Peter England and Louis Philippe are the brands which everyone is familiar with and uses on daily basis. They are quality brands and are internationally known. Merger of idea and Vodafone shows how Aditya Birla group can adopt changes in rapidly changing technological and business environment and continue to provide products a common man can use. Aditya Birla capital provides investment opportunity to us and helps companies which need capital via capital market roots. Payment bank division of this group will be the next product we will be using if it get popularized and it can help us to provide credit and payment facility on their own retail and other brand stores 

Learning by doing in real life environment and learning from other peoples experiences is best thing someone can have.

We were working on our own startup and I was responsible for smooth operation of our business. I was also responsible for how working capital is best utilized. We built a code system to manage our customers efficiently. We were a social startup which used to buy trash from rag pickers and sell them to mills. They used to collect a lot of things which used to be hazardous and we didn’t quite like that so we told them not to use or collect hazardous things. For example they used to collect and buy copper wires from households and burn the plastics to extract copper but burning that emits a lot of unwanted gasses, so we helped them to not burn and buy those wires directly and remove plastics with wire striping machine. One more achievement of mine which I am quite close with is once it was decided where we should start our operation and how to do it on paper with various business scenarios then biggest task was to go into the field and meet vendors and customers. But since we were engineering graduates and few of us were not trained to meet these people and negotiate a deal. I led the charge and met many people and told the story about them to our partners, they became excited and they also conducted a lot of meetings with shopkeepers. This I think is due to our upbringing, since I was from a rural area so there are no such things as status symbols or something like that and I think they do not matter over the long run. Lately I was fascinated by finance and economics and reading up on these topics made me a more serious and mature person as understanding choices people make in economy is just fascinating.