ABG - Fuelling My Fashion - Vivian Nutulapati, IIM Sirmaur

In the current generation, there is a need for proper first impressions and whether we like it or not, we are judged based on our looks. As it is said, “dress for the job you want”, a huge contributing factor for a good impression is good clothing. “The boor covers himself, the rich man or the fool adorns himself, and the elegant man gets dressed”, a great quote by Honore de Balzac.  Being well-dressed injects confidence in the person. It gives off an air of elegance to everyone around him.

Being a guy from a middle class family in India, I grew up learning to love branded clothes. For me, as a kid, Peter England had been the go-to store for elegant and high quality formal wears. In my teens the fascination with foreign brands and the need to show off increased  but as I grew up, I realised that various Indian companies have excellent products in the Indian market itself and the “make in India “ campaign has ignited a desire in me to use Indian products as much as I can. It would be hypocritical if say I only use Indian brands, but I try my best to get my hands on whichever ones I come across.

Aditya Birla group has a lot of subsidiaries in the fashion Industry like Louis Philippe, Allen Solly, Van Heusen, Peter England etc. These brands have been my favourite brands since a long time, especially Van Heusen which makes up a huge part of my wardrobe.

Challenges 

“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”  - An honourable excerpt from the book The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. Life is unfair, but the ones who persist when the odds are stacked up against them are the ones who triumph over life.

The challenges in my life may not seem monumental or my failures so humbling to others, but to me those have been my entire adult life experience. My parents are well educated, hence it has been a fervent desire of my father to make sure his children were too. With his inspiration I have decided to take up a management course from an IIM and set down to prepare for my CAT in the year 2014. However, I couldn’t reach up to the percentile cut-off set for that years’ admission process. Hence, I decided to work for a few years and gather work experience and then attempt CAT again. So I took up the examination again in 2016 and 2017 wherein I scored lesser than the previous attempts continuously. 

I was devastated and very much depressed, but with the help of my family and friends I was able to bounce back.  I made a decision to quit my job and work on the preparation of the exam.  And this time I scored better than ever and I am currently studying in IIM SIRMAUR. It took me five long years and four grizzly attempts to finally get here, which I am sure is just the beginning of the journey. More than anything in these five years, I learnt to build up my faith in God and resilience to stick to my goals no matter how long it takes or how ugly the process may seem.