VGSoM,IIT Kharagpur
Part A
ABGLP is one of India’s largest, prestigious and most successful conglomerates. It is the third largest Indian private sector conglomerate which operates in 35 countries with more than 1 lakh employees. Its key interests include Cement, viscose staple-fiber, metals, branded apparel, financial services, chemicals, fertilizers, BPO and IT services. As per 2018 reports, its revenue is close to 44 billion dollars.
The ABGLP non ferrous metals’ business operates under Hindalco Industries. In 2007,the company entered into an agreement to acquire a Canadian company named Novelis making the combined entity the world’s largest rolled-Aluminium producer. The chief products of Hindalco include alumina chemicals, primary aluminium rolled products and cast copper products which cater to a large number of heavy and light engineering industries.
The cement business is carried out through UltraTech Cement which is India’s largest cement company. ABGLP carries out its carbon black business after purchasing Columbian chemicals company which is now the largest manufacturer of carbon black worldwide. The group is also owns the Birla cellulose brand and is the world’s largest producer of viscose staple fiber. It operates from India, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and China. It also owns acrylic fiber business, viscose filament yarn businesses and spinning mills in India and South East Asia and also has pulp and plantation interests in Canada and Laos.
ABGLP sells in house and other branded apparel through physical retail stores as well as online stores. The in-house brands include Louis Phillipe, Allen Solly, Van Heusen and Peter England and People. It also operates a multi brand fashion retail chain Pantaloon. The fashion brands of ABGLP group enjoy a huge popularity because of their apparel being comfortable along with highly elegant and smart designs which also appeal greatly to the customers. Planet Fashion, which is a men’s clothing brand now has more than 150 retailers in more than 100 cities throughout the nation. The powerful brand has a reputation of giving comprehensive closet alternatives for occasions. Madura Fashion and Lifestyle which is ABGLP largest retail store enterprise is the strongest developing brand clothes corporations throughout India.
As a part of its Telecom business, Idea Cellular brand which was started as a joint venture with the AT&T and Tata Group now accounts for one-third of the entire ABGLP market capitalization. In 2018 Idea Cellular completed its merger with Vodafone India and became the largest telecom company in terms of subscriber and revenue.
Aditya Birla Capital(ABC) is the most important brand for all the financial services of ABGLP. ABFSG ranks among the top 5 fund managers of India. It has a strong presence in life insurance and asset management sectors and caters to a huge section of our population.
All these services provided by the company make it very important in the lives of millions of customers in the globe including me. I have found the apparel brands of the ABGLP group to be very comfortable, elegant and capable of imparting a smart look and I prefer to wear them on every formal occasion. I am also an avid user of the Vodafone network for the last 8 years and I have found its services to be very smooth.
Part B
I remember vividly that after 6 months of my training and induction period in Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages I had to face a tremendous challenge pertaining to language and communication when I was posted in a factory in Bidadi, Karnataka. I was from West Bengal and knew English, Hindi and Bengali. But the place in which I was posted was completely unfamiliar with all of the above languages. I was feeling lost and I felt that all my dreams were shattered because I was unable to communicate anything at all to my team since all the people in my team knew only Kannada as a means of communication. They were operators and associates who had never had the chance to learn any other language apart from their own mother-tongue-Kannada.
I was in such a situation that either I had to resign and leave all my dreams behind or learn Kannada as fast as possible and deliver my targets at work. I decided to undergo the latter course of action and decided to face the situation with utmost courage and determination. I picked up whatever I could from online sources and used to listen to conversations which people used to have with each other. I used to stand and listen to people talking in groups whenever I could. Slowly, after a week I started communicating to people in Kannada in small sentences. This action triggered something inside some of my colleagues who then offered to help me in learning the language.
I started conversing with my colleagues who then used to motivate me to try and speak and also corrected my errors in sentences. This boosted my confidence and helped me think that I can easily learn it with everyone’s support. Slowly I started gaining command over the language and within 3 months I was able to speak decently and communicate clear sentences to my team. This act of competence helped me to earn tremendous respect and support from my team members who had greatly supported me throughout my entire tenure at HCCBPL. We had been a part of an optimization project where we had all supported and learnt from each other and together we had made the project successful which not only led to significant improvement in line productivity but had also led to significant cost saving as well.
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