I never considered the impact of Aditya Birla group in my life. Even though it has been in and around my life ever since I can remember. I remember being in a small town of Anand (Gujarat), which also milk capital of India, our most auspicious days were celebrated by buying brand new clothes from Van Heusen or Peter England. Both had a showroom in our town it was considered a novelty to buy shirts from it. I remember my dad buying new shirts for Diwali or his promotions or our family’s celebrations or giving gifts to our relatives such as some branded clothes, and we would always turn to Perter England or Van Heusen. It was the gold standard of the clothes in our town along with selected few other brands.

Little did I know then that it was Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail Ltd.’s subtle presence in the form of brands such as Louis Philippe, Allen Solly, Van Heusen, Peter England and People.

Later in life when I stayed in Pune where I became a loyal user of Idea network. I arrived in town fresh from my Mysore days of famous InfoTech company of that town. New city of Pune, got no clue of local language, just a few of us new joiners roaming around the city trying figure out how to get from one place to another, and we faced our first major problem - bad network connection. Back then we must have tried almost every big network service provider but only Idea came to our rescue and instantly all of us became and part of Idea family specially the lucrative offer of corporate network plan with best service in town made us its fan.

All I am trying to say is that Aditya Birla Group is truly big in my life by being present in various parts of it, from most special occasions to smallest necessities needed to live. I would definitely quote the famous Idea slogan here for ABG – ‘What an Idea sir Ji’.

But there was more to Idea’s story in my life- they want to us be liberated from high costs of internet and truly explore all the possibilities of the internet to our best. ‘Net se sab sikho’! I never had a good internet connection in my home while growing up. ‘Ghar p internet ki kya zarurat h, kitabo se pado’, I am sure a lot of you would have heard this while growing up. But there are a lot of things that I wanted to know and I couldn’t get them from the limited books around me. The moment I started reading on something I wanted to know more until I couldn’t take anymore, and more than often the books didn’t give complete picture or it was not possible for me to get those which would give me this knowledge.

But when I got the seemingly unlimited high speed internet connection from Idea I could explore all - from reading online books trying out my hand in writing and publishing short stories online as a free-lancer. This small stint opened up my hand in writing and has given me a drive that I want to continue further. But not just limited to fiction – in astronomy (my another biggest passion) I could read on outer space or watch unlimited informative videos on how things work stretching from our solar system to galaxies and black holes. These are the things that Idea internet service has opened up in me and I will burn this light of my passion forever.

Truly an ‘Idea’ that changed my life, thanks to Aditya Birla group.

Saurabh Anand

Creating dreams and spreading happiness- Saurabh Anand, MDI Gurgaon