Back in 1857, Seth Shiv Narayan Birla laid the foundation of Birla Group of Companies by venturing into cotton trading in the tiny village of Pilani, Rajasthan. And in 1996, all group companies were consolidated under the umbrella of the Aditya Birla Group, led by Kumar Mangalam Birla, with the new corporate logo of rising sun to honour the memory of late Aditya Birla. Since then it has expanded its operations across 35 countries with a strength of 1.2 lac employees and revenues of US$44.3 billion, it is the third-largest Indian private sector conglomerate. The Aditya Birla Group has its share of success in almost all the businesses they own ranging from Agriculture to Textile, Cement to Mining, E-Commerce to Finance, Telecommunication to Retail.
Various renowned subsidiaries of this group over a course of 162 years are Grasim Industries, Aditya Birla Capital, Vodafone Idea, UltraTech Cement, Apparel business (Arrow, Van Heusen, Peter England, etc.), retail (MORE store). This group has always strived to innovate and with its Challenge of Change, it was brought a wave of transformation in the industries it operates. This motivates me to be innovative and bring change wherever I am.
First of all, let me start thanking MoreStore for providing me with a range of products from fresh groceries to electronics, cosmetics to confectionery, stationary to apparel, you name it. It has helped me in saving my time, money and energy of going to different shops for different products. It has become a one stop solution for my daily needs. Secondly, the launch of Van Heusen revolutionised workwear in India. And with Van Heusen, I feel that I can express myself better at workplace as it has improved my personality with the power dressing. Thirdly, Peter England, Allen Solly, Pnataloons and Louis Phillipe has helped me strengthen my relationship with my father and brother. At different occasions of Father's day and Rakshabandhan, their apparel collection has helped me express my love for them. Also, launching of Abof to compete with e-commerce websites like Myntra, Flipkart, LimeRoad has shown me importance of innovation and motivates me to compete. Ultratech Cement, branded as an engineer’s choice is India’s No.1 cement brand, has contributed towards infrastructure building in India. This is a brand I can trust blindly when it comes to building an important part of life, home. Lastly , ABG has also made it big in the Telecommunications Domain with Vodafone Idea which is the largest telecom company in India.
With the mission of delivering superior value to the society, customers and employees , Aditya Birla Group offers innovative products and services and thus adding value in everyone’s life.
How I overcame challenges to achieve ambitions in my life?
Life consists of experiences, challenges, and achievements all of which are building blocks that inherently create one’s paths to success. Throughout my life I have faced numerous challenges but the most significant one was of growth and customer retention in my health venture. It was in the growth phase where there was ever increasing competition in the market because of opening of new studios. So, I analysed that situation and worked on various strategies to steer growth and retain customers for longer period.
I examined that a member stayed for just one and a half months on average which was quite low. To solve this, I started with a process of taking regular feedback to understand the requirements of members better. This gave them an opportunity to voice their opinions and convey specific needs. And this enabled me to enhance customer experience by bringing in appropriate changes in the processes and way of conducting sessions. Also, I learnt that customer engagement is crucial to retain for longer time which I achieved by making active groups on social media, organising competitions and fun activities on regular basis. As a result of all this, the average retention time of members improved to three months eventually. I also worked on various offline and online marketing strategies with social media marketing as the focal point for venture’s development.
Throughout the span of one year or so, I stayed focused, determined and did hard work to overcome these challenges and improved my problem solving, decision making and other leadership skills. Having goals in mind and striving to achieve them with focus, dedication, consistency, innovation and other leadership skills is what Aditya Birla Group had been doing for years with widely skilled human resource. This is a major reason that it has become one of the biggest conglomerates in India while overcoming challenges which come in its path.