Part A:
India has very few conglomerates run by families which earn respect from all quarters of the country and Aditya Birla Group (ABG) stands out among those with its history of being in business for more than 120 years. ABG which started its business in textile business gradually moved in all sectors and right now operates in more than 45 sectors and in multiple countries. Its success story is worth a legend and has made a huge impact on the business and economic spheres of the country. The group which has been operating in the country way back before independence has touched upon every family and might have well served every individual as it is spread from retail to textile, construction to infrastructure, telecom to finance, stationary materials to chemicals and many more. In this article would like to touch upon the brands of ABG which have been part of my life.
I still remember the bags of cement of Ultratech laid beside the construction site of my house and these are early sights I associate with the brand ABG. The first shopping center which I visited was Pantalooms, when my father took me to buy a birthday dress and that experience walking through the aisles of the shop is still fresh in my memory. The brand in textiles which comes to my mind when I look for fine suiting and shirting is Van-Heusen. The elegance the brands of ABG like Louie Phillipe, Peoples etc have cannot be matched for with any other group. It was Idea which had been the first network carrier I used for communication and I still remember the day when my father took me to the shop to get as it was the best-connected network in my neighborhood.
ABG is such a company whose brands are widespread in almost all the sectors and evoke great respect from each corner. The normal Indian might not know that the brands he has been using, just as me who got to know about these brands in hindsight, are of ABG but the history of the business in the country is incomplete without the mention of Aditya Birla which had been a star glowing brighter than thousand other stars.
Part B:
“Life is a fight where you compete against yourself and become better and better at each moment.”
This has been the philosophy guiding me for the past 20 years and probably will be for the next 50 years. I see a challenge as an opportunity to get good, to do better and to become the best. Right from my childhood where I set upon the ambition of standing first in school to getting a best rank in exam after getting hospitalized for 4 months, the challenges I faced have made a deep impact on me as a person. Yet of all the challenges I faced the best had been the goal of getting into a B-School about which I would like to elucidate.
After getting Distinction with a Second rank in University upon completing Engineering and having a seat from prestigious universities following graduate entry examinations I found no interest in going forward with the offers. It was the lowest time in my life fraught with personal problems and me receding into depression. At this moment, I made up my mind of achieving something big, something substantial to prove myself in front of those faces which jeered at me and let me into chaos. It was the biggest ambition in my life as I rejected everything to go forward and had to start from scratch regarding this goal. I had 6 months of time, which was ample, but I could not lift myself up from the chaos. It was my sheer strength regarding this ambition that I decided to put 100% of myself into this as it was Now Or Never. With strong support from the family, I put aside everything, my friends, my sleep, my love, my desires and many more plunging into the studies and determined strongly that I am going to be the winner in this battle with myself. That rigorous hardship I put into was a revelation of myself as I could see a new character which was matured, enduring and goal-oriented which I had never been. By putting in the best of myself I could realize my dreams and reach to the point which I had dreamt of, but my happiness lies in the work and time which changed me around as more matured and responsible person.
Life is a simple phenomenon where challenges come not to test you but to make you a better person. This is the hard-learned fact which might be as simple when it sounds but as difficult as to endure.
“Happy Challenges”
#IIMRAIPUR #ABG #ABGLPWOOME #MBAATIIM