The Aditya Birla Group, founded in 1857, is a 4th generation business conglomerate. The group is built on a strong foundation of value creation. Adherence to strong business practices over seven decades has helped Aditya Birla Group grow into a global powerhouse in a wide range of sectors such as metals, telecom, cement, financial services, fashion and retail, chemicals, carbon black, insulators, mining and agri-business.
Aditya Birla Group – The company founded in 1857, shining & reinvigorating life of all the stakeholders for more than 150 years, since the real struggle for independence for united India began, has been a shining star in my life much like its legacy reflected in their logo representing all that is positive in business & in life.
We all thrive to do well in life and succeed but the bitter-sweet truth is that we all face failures and challenges. We make this worse by benchmarking our performance against the success of others. Success is something which we all take in a positive way but rather in a really general sense. This is the bitter part. This makes it necessary for one to understand that success is relative and everyone lives in his own timeline. But the sweet part is that failure doesn’t mean one is a loser and should only learn from them to achieve success on a much higher scale.
It’s a human tendency to believe that the other person’s bread is buttered on both the sides, but every person, sooner or later face some kind of challenges in their life. But, what matters is how we go through our life and all of its ups and downs with a positive attitude. The biggest challenge that I faced in my life comes when I was preparing for CAT 2018 and at the same time was doing my graduation.
Everyone is shaped in part by the past, present and the future, in other words, what was, what is and what is to be. For our character is shaped by our past, our choices guided by the present and our dreams, well, they span the entirety of our future! Growing up in South India, born to a Tamilian family in Kerala, I’ve had the best of two cultures and yet, never had either of them ingrained in me. I was neither a Tamilian nor a Malayali, but an Indian in its truest sense, united in one being in the midst of diversity. Like many urban Indians nowadays who come from a potpourri of cultures, my mind is most comfortable in English, my blood is Tamilian and my heart is Malayali!
ABG is big. ABG touches lives of 7.5 million people; it has lifted thousands out of poverty in Brazil, the Philippines, Thailand, and in a few more countries; it has 56 schools, 20 hospitals, and works in 5000 villages across the world; it operates in 35 countries, leads in sectors it operates in, and is a $44.3 bn company. All this makes ABG big in the lives of millions of people. However, I’d argue that this doesn’t make ABG big. In fact, I’d argue that ABG is small. Smallest even. So, let me talk about the bigger things in life and particularly my life.
Life puts you down at various stages only to see how resilient you are and whether you give up at the first sign of difficulty. Fortunately or unfortunately I got my moment quite early in life when I had just started my corporate career in sales and marketing. I was just a 21-year-old boy freshly minted out of grad school with no real life knowledge about how actual on-field sales take place. I soon started with my training which was some of the most challenging days of my life. I remember dreading every single day I was supposed to talk to potential customers. After the initial training in Bangalore, I was sent back to my hometown to begin market expedition on my own. The initial days were really tough when I was not able to perform to the best of my abilities. There were days when I would doubt my caliber. My initial results were disappointing and slowly I started questioning whether I am actually made for sales & marketing and whether this should be my domain to pursue any further. The actual trick in such a situation is to communicate. Communicate with someone you know and trust. It could be your colleague, your manager, your boss or even your subordinate! In my case, I confined into my manager and that really worked well. He gave some really useful insights and taught me the value of analysis. I learned the importance of self-evaluation, finding plug points and not repeating the same mistakes again. I would stay back in the office and listen to the entire audio conversation with the client and why I wasn’t able to close the sale lead on spot. I won't say that I improved overnight but yes I did get better in the upcoming weeks. Finally came a week when I was able to generate the highest revenue on the floor and that was indeed the proudest moment in this exhilarating journey. Afterward, I became as dependable as Rahul Dravid for my manager, he trusted me blindly to generate good numbers every week and never did I disappoint him even once. The fruits of the initial struggle finally bore results. Now, I can proudly say that I am a fairly confident speaker who backs his abilities to turn the tide in his favor. I am marching confidently towards my goal of bagging a coveted role in this domain after my MBA stint at MDI Gurgaon!
