Part A
My journey with Aditya Birla Group
I was the brightest student of “Shiv Narayan” Village, one of 300 model villages developed by Aditya Birla Centre for Community Initiatives for Rural Development. In addition to School, other facilities like a Jan Sewa hospital & a community hall was developed by the Centre in the village. In School, all basic amenities were in place and children were given mid day meal. Women were encouraged to actively participate in Self Help Group and be economically independent. The Village was electrified through Aditya Group’s Solar Powered Plant. Villagers used “Birla Shaktiman Vardaan” as their preferred Fertiliser for their crops. For any kind of credit, Aditya Birla Capital Limited was always there for villager’s disposal.
I graduated recently and was looking for a career in Management. I visited nearby town to take preparatory classes. I was fascinated with the glamour of town. Tall buildings with the hoarding of Vodafone-Idea promotional campaigns were ubiquitous. My persistent efforts ultimately paid off and I was admitted in Indian Institute of Foreign Trade. I approached Aditya Birla Capital Limited to finance my education and the loan was processed in a week time. In the process, I learnt about scholarships and applied at few places. After 2 months, I received a scholarship worth ₹ 175,000/- from Aditya Birla Group Scholarship.
Before the commencement of classes, my father took me to the town to get all my gears. We happened to visit Pantaloons. I chose my outfits from the range of brands like Peter England, Van Heusen, Allen Solly, Ralph Lauren to name a few. Father also got me an account with Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank Limited and we paid our bills by the same. On way back to home, we stopped to buy a bag of Ultratech Cement to do over our kitchen.
Thereafter, my journey began at IIFT and post that I joined ABG’s Leadership Associate Programme and my association continued with the most vibrant group of world.
Part B
A Case of Perseverance to achieve Excellence
Life itself is a challenge; better face it rather than running away from it. That’s the lesson I learnt from my father. So far, life did throw many challenges to me and I have taken each of those head on. There is one particular challenge worth mentioning.
During my stint with Flowserve Sanmar Limited, I was entrusted with a key account in Grasim Industries Limited (Unit of Indo Gulf Fertilizer). During my visit to the plant, Deputy General Manager of Mechanical Maintenance – Mr Sudhakar Dubey and his team gave me the task of modifying of existing non-cartridge mechanical seal for Boiler Feed Water pump into a cartridge seal design. Advantages of cartridge seal design over non-cartridge are plenty and mentioning the same here is beyond the scope of this article. I never did such upgradation before. I took all the inputs from Indo Gulf Team, contacted my Engineering team to check the feasibility of such upgradation. On the first glance, they confirmed that requested modification could be done. The hidden challenge was to maximise the usage of existing spares i.e., maximum utilization of available seal spares incorporating the change in design. We submitted a proposal drawing to Mr Dubey and his team. After necessary approval, we received a formal purchase order to supply one set of mechanical seal. We manufactured the seal and supplied. During maintenance, customer called me up to depute our service engineer so that the mechanical seal could be installed.
All major challenges which we couldn’t think of in the beginning cropped up. Our service engineer in consultation with Grasim team updated us that there aren’t any space available in stuffing box plus the nut and bolt of pump casing hinders the fitting of mechanical seal. To fit the seal, at least 3 mm drilling and then surface smoothing was required to which customer didn’t agree. The rationale was that the thickness of stuffing box would decrease and it may affect the pump operation overall. Now, everyone at Grasim Industries was furious at us. Even Mr Dubey and team had to take the beating from their top management. We had to face the commercial consequences of this failure. Since the seal couldn’t fit in, we installed the existing seal and got the pump started. Thereafter also, we tried to look for ways around the problem but the equipmental constraint didn’t let us succeed. We still manage to use the maximum supplied material in existing mechanical seal thereby minimizing the loss.
Quite a few lessons learnt from this experience. Never give up is one. Keep trying, look for ways around. Don’t succumb with one or two failures. We didn’t succeed due to constraint otherwise we did everything we had. I aspire to continue with the same vigour and look forward to take up such challenges to further enhance my knowledge base and skill sets.