Coming from a small town in central India, I have always felt it is necessary to start small, work hard and keep on going until you have hit the bull’s eye. When an inexperienced 28-year-old Mr. Kumar Mangalam Birla joined the ABG no one thought it would be where it is today even after surviving the 1991 liberalization no one except Mr. Birla himself.
Oprah Winfrey once said that, “Excellence is unforgettable” and so is the Aditya Birla Group of companies. Businesses that create a sustainable relationship with their customers will always find themselves to be extremely successful. When a business holds the potential of impacting a consumer’s life, it sows the seeds of a fruitful engagement between itself and the consumer.
"MG, I got a fantastic idea. Why not we continue what we are doing now?"
“New beginnings, new challenges and responsibilities” – something my mother said to me while I was leaving the house on the first day of my college. Like any other fresher in college, I also had many hopes and aspirations about my college life ahead. For starters, I had decided to be a part of the fashion society, “Debonair”. I had done my research like a good kid and was super ready to walk the ramp for the auditions. One week into the college, the day had finally arrived when Debonair announced their audition schedule and theme. The theme was “beachy vibes”. As soon as I read the poster I knew exactly what I wanted to wear, from the clothing to the footwear. That day, I went back home and decided to wear a green spaghetti top with a white chicken pencil skirt. For the footwear, I had decided to borrow my sister’s white wedges. Next day, I gathered all my courage and confidence and walked into the audition room to get myself registered. What I saw next was nothing short of facing my worst nightmare. The registration table read – “only pencil or block heels allowed, no wedges”. I was traumatised since this was something I hadn’t expected. I had already given up when suddenly a friend of mine suggested that I go to FOREVER21 nearby at kamla nagar market. I told her that now I possibly couldn’t find anything that matched my outfit and that I should probably give up and go home. She insisted on me and we both went to F21 store. To my surprise, they had a remarkable and trendy footwear collection which had not one but three pairs of stilettoes that looked magnificent with my outfit. I bought a pair of white strappy stilettoes with a little glitter on them and walked the ramp like a diva. Obviously, to no surprise of mine, I got selected to debonair – The fashion society of Daulat Ram College, Delhi university.
I am an Economics graduate from Delhi University. Like my other friends who were pursuing a graduate degree in economics and commerce, who had either the plans to do an M.A. in Economics or secure a degree in management studies, I chose the latter. I joined a coaching institute for CAT preparations like any other MBA aspirant would do, during the final year of completion of my graduate degree course. To my surprise, coping up with graduate studies along with studying for CAT wasn’t as easy as I though it to be, especially since I was doing graduation in B. A. Hons. Economics, which is among one of the toughest courses. So, to much of my disappointment I couldn’t clear CAT in the winter of 2017, thus, I wasn’t eligible to apply to any B-school at that time. There were these 4 months in my life after these results where I had lost all hope of ever getting into a good B-school and thus had made up my mind to try out working at a job before I choose the stream to pursue my master’s degree. I worked in a recruitment firm for 3 months after which I gave up on that as well since many of my colleagues at my workplace motivated me to quit and study for Cat2018 as they saw potential in me. Hearing this from 12 HR professionals who have been working in the industry for ranging from 5-20 years, convinced me to prepare for Cat again and this time crack it. I scored 85.75 percentile in Cat2018 and appeared for interviews of many esteemed B-schools, one of which was TAPMI. I chose to be here and I sincerely believe that I deserve to be here because I have had the courage to drop an year and then quit a job to come to this place and I hope to make the best out of it.
From fashion retails to financial services ADITYA BIRLA GROUP has been ‘Taking India to the world’ for over more than one and a half century now. With its diverse range of products and services, it has risen to the third largest private sector conglomerates in the Indian subcontinent.
