Why Aditiya Birla Group is big in your life?
Shopping malls have always been drivers of cultures and trends in a city. A decade earlier, the temple city of Bhubaneswar had just a couple of shopping complexes. So, when one such galleria opens up near the neighbourhood, a little kid wasn’t able to contain his excitement. Pantaloons. Quite a whacky name for a fashion powerhouse. Needless to say, whenever I visited the place, I was bowled over every time. Later when I learnt it was owned by the mammoth Aditya Birla Group, it was all the more reason to cheer for the brand.
Come college, and there is this mad rush to find formals which you have never worn until then. I kept hopping around various stores until my dad suggested me to go for Peter England as he was a patron of formal clothing. True to his words, the brand was a revelation. The designs, the stitching and the fit spoke for itself. With formals, you suddenly graduate from being a teenager to being a man.
Again, with Postgrad, new opportunities brought newer challenges. And business formals are the new norm in b-school. Again, I stumbled on a Van Heusen suit which had the perfect shade and the right fit. I was again delighted to learn that the brand was owned by the ABG group.
Essentially, more than half of my wardrobe and almost all of the inflection points of my life always had a little bit of ABG in them.
How you overcame challenges to achieve your ambitions in life so far?
There are times you find it hard coming out of a rut in your life. It’s difficult to break pattern and find joy in the humdrum. After under graduation was over, there was a phase where I thought I was falling short of things to look forward to. Essentially, I was sceptical about whether I would like the work coming my way or not.
But things started to look better once I joined Tata Consultancy Services for my Initial Learner’s Program. I gradually started finding my feet in the software industry and learnt about various industry standards and verticals. There was a lot of thrust on holistic development and the training phase brought me back to my A-game. I also won the LIREL award which is given to the best performers of every ILP batch.
Post training, I got an opportunity to work with the cyber security division of TCS which was again an exciting phase which I did not anticipate. I got to learn the nuances and the tricks of the trade on the job. Sure, there were challenges at every step of the way. But I always tried tapping into the best version of myself. I remembered to prioritize the little things that I can improve today over the big goals that I keep conjuring up tomorrow. My biggest take away from the experience was consistency can help you overcome any stumbling block. And I have always believed in the power of serendipity. We often tend to stumble on to success instead of achieving it. Sometimes all it takes is hanging in there!
#ABGLP #ABGWOOME #XIMB #ABGWOOMESEASON-2