Aditya Birla Group has been at the forefront of Indian industrial evolution since its inception; it is a true Indian multinational corporation. Seth Shiv Narayan Birla established this enterprise in 1857 as a textile trading firm and in last 160 years Ghanshyam Das Birla, Aditya Birla, and Kumar Mangalam Birla this trio has grown this firm into a Telecom to Textile mammoth. Aditya Birla Group’s subsidiaries range from “Idea Vodafone” India’s largest telecom provider to “Ultra Tech Cement” a global leader in cement, from “Birla Carbon” world’ s no. 1 carbon black producer to “Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail” India’s No. 1 fashion lifestyle entity. Having 44.3billion USD in revenues to operating in 34 countries across five continents, with over 130 state-of-the-art manufacturing units anchored by 120,000employees belonging to 42 different nationalities Aditya Birla Group has become a truly global conglomerate.
As Mr. Kumar Mangalam Birla says, “Great businesses are never built on the quicksand of opportunism. I reiterate that, if living by our values means, perhaps growing at a pace slower than we would otherwise have liked, so be it. For us, leadership lies at the heart of knowing what we stand for”, with this moto ABG has been implementing sustainable business practices at all of its companies. Novelis: an ABG company, recycles 50 billion used beverage cans every year which is largest in the world, so if you are drinking a Pepsi or Coke, there are many chances that ABG will recycle it. Birla Carbon’s 13 out of 17 plants are energy positive, and 11 plants excrete zero industrial water wastage. As in same way, ABG has implemented sustainable practices in all its companies.
Aditya Birla group has been very instrumental in my life, I bought my first sim card from Idea cellular way back in 2011, and since then, I have been a loyal idea customer. In terms of clothing options Louis Philippe, Allen Solly, Van Heusen, and Peter England are my go-to options, and as I am writing this article, I am wearing Allen Solly polo t-shirt.
When I was in my 3rd year of engineering, I got into a project of developing Formula Racing vehicle for Formula Student racing Team “Stallion Motorsports” a team which I co-founded with the of some of my friends while in engineering. I was made CAD and CAE department head as I was one with knowledge of CAD tools like Catia and Solidworks. I did not have any prior knowledge of designing and manufacturing vehicle. So, what we did as a team was, we sat for consecutive two weeks reading books about racing vehicle development. Furthermore, I got inputs from seniors about designing and manufacturing who had prior knowledge about the same kind of vehicle development. I combined this knowledge with data from the event rule book, inputs from our professors and inputs from my fellow teammates about their departments like engine & transmission, steering, suspension, etc. and we designed and manufactured our “1.0” vehicle. It took us almost 16-18 hours of work a day for three months to designed and manufactured the vehicle. We raced in Formula Student Racing event SUPRA SAE India. Despite being new to the event and not knowing many facets of racing we got All India Rank 21 in the final event. For this event, we had to compete with so many deadlines from the organizing committee, workday and night on the workshop floor, had to work with financial constraints, solved many manufacturing problems and the college and university exams. However, we sailed through this and completed the event successfully.
This event gave me precious life lessons. The first lesson being I learned that if you work hard, it will always pay off. This event also taught me the value of working in a team and collaboration, which further helped me while working in teams for my further ventures.