Aditya Birla Group - Traversing Life Together | Vivek Shekar, IIM Nagpur

Aditya Birla Group, a conglomerate that has touched probably the life of each and every citizen of the world, their presence is undeniable - right from styling one’s wardrobe to helping build one’s dream home. Hence, to explain how they have influenced lives is hard but I will try to do the same with an example.

I have spent the majority of my childhood in the 90s along with my friend Nishant.

Nishant and I have been friends right from school and have been together since.

Nishant and his family used to live in a modest house as tenants. In 1998, his father had decided to build their own house in a location a few miles away from their current rented accommodation. I frequently used to accompany Nishant and his father on a visit to this new albeit under-construction home of theirs. This was when I first came across Ultratech cement, one of ABGs most popular products, and I had noticed a considerable amount of these bags stacked one above another. Fast forward few years to today, Nishant has his own two-storied home with tenants on the first floor and his family residing on the second. Those who were once tenants themselves in the past are landlords today. This is how I feel ABG has been a part of multiple lives. They have been part of people’s lives wherein they have helped them realize their dreams, one wherein they have been witness to people changing their lives for the better and one wherein ABG has spread happiness to people’s lives.

This was just one of the multiple cases that might be spread all over the world. Their multi-brand portfolio ensures they have a presence in almost every person’s life. Somewhere in the world, there might be Peter England shirt that has been a witness to a person scaling newer heights or Hindalco manufactured aluminum extrusions that have seen quite a few people achieve their dreams.

Right from my childhood, I had been a person who would find it difficult to express my thoughts and feelings to others which had subsequently led to my introversion and aversion to communicate lucidly with others. This remained a part of my personality right until my teenage years and it was during those years that I finally overcame this challenge of mine. Initially, I required constant positive self-reinforcement to feel confident enough to express my thoughts freely but as I later found out it wasn’t even necessary in the first place. Somewhere down the line in those years it dawned upon me that we as humans or at least I judge ourselves too harshly and care too much about the image we might be projecting onto others. Realizing this I no longer felt the need to impress others or think about how they would perceive me if I said something I believed in or felt right. And to my amazement, this not only helped me in being communicative but I could feel it helped the other person too.

I am now able to make friends with anyone, joke about everything and talk about anything under the sun. I guess that makes me an ambivert now. This has been a fun and exciting journey to self-realization.