Aditya Birla Group has played a significant role in my life on account of the various brands across so many sectors. From Pantaloons to Allen Solly, from Van Heusen to Louis Phillipe, from UltraTech Cement to Idea, the presence of Aditya Birla Group has indeed touched some aspects of my life.
None more so than Idea Cellular. Idea brings back a lot of memories from my middle and high school days. It takes me back to 2011-2012, almost 8-9 years back, when the smartphone boom had just started and the world was a much different place than it is today. Idea is closely associated to my first ever usage of a mobile phone. Funny thing about it is the fact that it wasn’t actually my phone. Guess whose was it? Yeah, you guessed it right. It was my mother’s phone and we all know how our mothers use phones. They hardly ever make the full use of a mobile phone, let alone a smartphone. Jokes aside, that phone and that sim card from Idea gave me the first ever experience of using a mobile phone and it was certainly something which fascinated my curious mind.
After using my mom’s phone for a while, I finally got my first ever mobile phone. A smartphone with an Idea prepaid sim card which worked absolutely fine. What did that mean for me? I could finally talk with my then girlfriend without the never-ending fear that mom would read an SMS and come to know about my secret relationship! That was the best part about it. Idea helped me connect with many of my dear ones including my then girlfriend. It’s extra special because it was a classic high-school romance which we all have and hold close to our hearts forever. I remember visiting Idea recharge shops to get some small recharges done without my parents knowing about it and trust me, it filled me with an adrenaline rush for sure. It gave me a sense of maturity which anyone craves for when they are yet to become 18.
This way, Idea became an integral part of my life effortlessly and I don’t even consider any other telecom operator as an option for me. It’s been almost a decade since I purchased my first Idea sim card and to this day, I am an Idea subscriber and will continue to be one. Such is the bond which I share with Idea and Aditya Birla Group.
My story of how I overcame odds and obstacles to reach SIBM, Pune is quite unique because of some aspects which I will describe below. I am an Engineer from Symbiosis Institute of Technology, Pune (SIT, Pune) and I have joined SIBM, Pune as a fresher in the new batch of 2019-2021. As fate would have it, both of these institutions are 2 kms apart. The first time I visited the campus of SIBM, Pune as a student of SIT, almost 2-3 years back, I was in owe of the culture and the crowd here. It filled me with a dream of going to a Tier-1 B-school and little did I know at that time, that I would end up at SIBM Pune, one of the top B-schools of the country and hardly just a couple of kilometres away from my college where I spent 4 years pursuing Engineering.
My journey to SIBM Pune was no easy task. That whole preparation period from July-December coincided with my industrial internship semester at college and it was an awful lot of hard work managing my prep along with doing well at my internship. I used to wake up at 7 am every day, study for an hour, get ready and then head off to the internship where I worked till 6pm. From there, I went to a coaching class almost 20 kilometres away from the office on a 2-wheeler and a lot of times, heavy rain tried to stop me from reaching the coaching centre but I was too determined to let it stop me. I used to study till almost 12 midnight before coming back home and that’s how the routine worked. Weekends were fully used for studying and I cultivated a lot of discipline during this period.
I used to live alone in a 1-bhk flat and I managed everything from paying bills to managing the maid who used to cook and clean the flat, to groceries etc. All of this with the juggling act of managing my CAT and SNAP preparation with the internship commitments.
At the end of it all, making it to SIBM, Pune after all this struggle was worth every tear and every drop of sweat.