On a fine Monday morning, you wake up in your home, cell phone buzzing on the side table staring right back at you, telling you you’re running late. Calls over calls and missed calls, you rush to get dressed. Put on your perfectly ironed white shirt and blue trousers and freshly prepared breakfast is packed to go. All along what you don’t realize is that the home you live in made of Birla Cement, the cell phone that connects you to millions outside is enabled by Idea. The white shirt you flaunt was picked up from Allen Solly and the blue trousers from Louis Philippe, by your wife and daughter while they were on a shopping spree at the mall, wading through Pantaloons, Forever 21 and Liva. And last but not the least, the food that you unwrap during lunch was kept fresh until now by Freshwrapp aluminium foil.
In our everyday life, we fail to realise how a simple set of products facilitate our actions. And when all processes are made effective by one entity alone, one can only fathom the impact it makes on the whole country and in the world.
The roots of the Aditya Birla Group go back to almost a century before independence and its role in India’s economic history is tied with the country’s quest for political freedom. The foundation of the Birla business empire, which was eventually divided among the members of the subsequent generations, was laid by Shiv Narayan Birla, who started cotton trading in Pilani, Rajasthan, in 1857.
In the early years of the 20th century, his grandson, Ghanshyamdas Birla, established businesses in critical sectors such as textiles and fibre, aluminium, cement and chemicals.
The Kolkata-based businessman became closely associated with Mahatma Gandhi and accompanied him to London on two occasions to attend the historic round table conferences. It was at a public prayer meeting in Birla house in Delhi in 1948 that Gandhi was shot dead by an assassin.
Grasim Industries Ltd, the flagship of the Aditya Birla Group, was incorporated on 25 August 1947, just 10 days after India became independent. The firm then manufactured textiles from imported raw materials. Grasim is now a global leader in viscose staple fibre.
And these tiny footprints have led this big empire to touch a million lives now. One may try, but one cannot get through without being touched by the Aditya Birla Group.