“What is
Big?” Aditya Birla group has always tried to define it their way. With over 10 major subsidiaries, ranging from metals, cement to branded apparel to financial services to telecom and IT services. For ABG, big is MASSIVE but big is also microscopic. The main aim is to express the company moving from ‘Being Big’ to creating and delivering ‘Big Value’ for its consumers and people at large. I have seen Birla Cement since I was a child and it has always been a household name. When mobile phones were in the starting to gain popularity, Idea emerged as a great service provider in the telecom industry. Now with Pantaloons as one of the emerging apparel department store, ABG is providing good quality clothing at very reasonable prices. After taking admission in MBA, students were supposed to get a minimum of three pairs of formals. VanHeusen and Loise Philippe were the saviours.
For me, Aditya Birla Group is big in life because of the big values incorporated by them through their Corporate Social Responsibility activities. ABG has collaborated with the Central Government's Scheme of “Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya” (KGBV). The objective of KGBV is to ensure access and quality education to the girl child of disadvantaged sections of the society by setting up residential schools up to class 8 and bring them back to the mainstream of education. With over fifteen locations in India and a few countries like Thailand and Egypt, the impact created is long lasting.
In the healthcare sector, Pulse Polio programmes, HIV/AIDS, cancer, TB awareness and prevention camps are held to make the less literate population aware of these diseases.
Just like the Aditya Birla Group, I have always tried to do big in my life. Always trying to help people without ever expecting anything back from them. I have been a shy kid since my inception. So cracking an interview to enter a good B-School was a challenge for me as I was unable to speak during the case and group discussions. Eventually, I started reading news and some random articles on the internet. My friends were a constant help and assisted me to get over my fear of public speaking.
In 2008, I started receiving a scholarship for Hindustani singing from the Centre for Cultural Resources and Training, Government of India. It came as a surprise because the scholarship is given to only 650 children across India in various arts fields like singing, music, painting, etc. There are interviews held every two years to evaluate the progress and decide whether the scholarship should be continued. In my first such review, due to over-confidence, I was out of practice and my progress was found unsatisfactory. After the rejection, I practised very hard to continue grooming the skill. Fortunately, I was considered as a special case and was called again for a review the next year. This time I was well prepared and I gained the scholarship. From that point, I never took anything for granted.
I was a part of the Nirma Robocon team in my first year of engineering. The team had been the winner of the ABU Robot Contest for two consecutive years. We wanted to maintain the winning streak. We worked for 6 months on the robots. Sometimes we used to work for 48 hours straight without sleeping. The main objective was to create two robots according to the theme. The robots were working properly during the test runs at college but failed to complete the first two tasks during the event. The sensors were unable to track the line due to change in lighting and some mechanical insufficiencies. These were some of the areas that had been highlighted earlier but we did not have enough courage to speak up. This taught me the importance of efficient communication and to never undermine an idea.
These have been a few of my experiences that made me realize that whatever life throws my way, I should never stop dreaming big. Someone has truly said, “A big man is one who makes us feel bigger when we are with him.”