Aditya Birla Group’s radiance has been enriching lives since 1857. Standing tall in the League of Fortune 500 as a US $44.3 billion corporation, Aditya Birla Group has a massive network consisting of over 120000 employees from 42 nationalities and have oversea operations across 34 countries in North and South America, Africa and Asia. They have been growing in numerous sectors such as metals, textiles, carbon black, telecom and cement.
My first experience with Aditya Birla Group’s brands was during my childhood when there were renovations going on in my house. Ultratech Cement bags were stacked in the corner of the room and that time I would often wonder how the bags containing a grey magic powder would be able to hold the weight of the entire building? The word cement became synonymous with strength once I saw the solid slabs which were the transformed versions of the powder, and even had a handprint of mine embedded into it. That spot then became the command center for my make-believe intergalactic spaceship where the handprint was the control panel and together with my friends we would spend hours there with our imaginations running wild.
Other brands which I have associated with are Pantaloons and Peter England. I had to buy a new shirt for the send-off party at my college the next day and Pantaloons saved the day. There were many varieties of shirts there and the sheer volume of products made me awestruck. As I was pondering over which shirt I should select, one of the employees of Pantaloons approached me, asked me for my preference and then guided me towards the Peter England section. It was there that I found the shirt I had been looking for. The deep blue color of the shirt had a grandeur and the shirt itself was very comfortable, almost as if it was handwoven for me. I wore that shirt to my send-off party and even got the courage to ask the girl I liked out on a date. Till date, the blue shirt is my favorite and also my lucky shirt.
There are numerous other brands of the Aditya Birla Group which I have used such as Van Heusen, Allen Solly, Hindalco Freshwrapp and Forever 21 but these two products are very special to me and I will forever cherish these moments.
Most of the 25 years of my life went by smoothly without any major challenges. However, there were 2 problems which proved to be very challenging and have been one of the best teachers in my journey. The first major problem arose during the planning of annual event Symbiot’14 in my university. I was the president then and had to overlook the entire event. My team had worked really hard to gather sponsors for the event but just a few days before the event, the main sponsor backed out and our budget was reduced by 50%. The stress levels of my team and I were off the charts. If we did not get any new sponsors then we would have to cancel the event and apologize to 25 colleges which were going to attend our event. Not only was this a huge setback for our club, but it was also tarnishing the name of my college. As a desperate measure, we decided to approach the DRDO for sponsorship. Within a span of 2 days, we managed to change the layout of the event to suit the needs of DRDO by adding more technical events and reducing the non-technical events and even managed to update our site while taking in account the budget constraints. We successfully conducted the event and it was the largest Symbiot event in the history of the club.
The other major problem arose when I was working at IBM India Pvt. Ltd. I was a new recruit and it was the first time I had taken part in a support activity. Usually, the support activities took place at night and didn’t have major backup issues. However that day one major backup issue arose and I had only a two-hour window to resolve it otherwise the data of thousands of customers would be lost resulting in a huge loss for the company. I contacted my teammates at 2 am and they helped me out to resolve the issue within the limited time frame and we were able to back up the entire data without any loss. Without the help, I wouldn’t have been able to complete the backup in time and I am very grateful to my teammates for the help.
These are the two cases where I have learned that panic and stress do not help to resolve any issue. Rather co-ordination with your teammates and staying calm helps to take better decisions to resolve the issues in times of crisis.