This is likely a feature in other campuses, but I wouldn’t know – IIM Indore has been my only college, as I am a part of the 5 year Integrated Programme of Management (IPM) that you can attend right after school. There are pictures of alumni on the walls of some of our classrooms. These alumni are clearly much older than we are, although we’re undergoing the same programme. It’s so evident from the way they look that they were the typical MBA students of yesteryear – they have work experience, and they have decided that in order to climb up the corporate ladder, they need a trump card up their sleeves. So they proceeded to pursue education from an IIM and they have been immortalized on the walls, beaming, with gold medals help up proudly. Looking at these photographs, I realize the big shoes that we IPMers have to fill. We’re so new to college, to the corporate world, to even life! I look around the classroom to see the innocent faces of my friends, listening intently in class. Whether or not they’re going to be gold medallists is not something I can tell, but I can envision each one of them being the best at whatever they aim to do.
IIM Indore has come a long way in choosing freshers, such as IPMers like myself, or people without work experience, from having a typical set of experienced students with an average age higher than ours. It seems like a risk to be training “kids” like us to be in the corporate world so early. That isn’t actually true. If anything, we’re the ones who have a higher drive to change things around us. We have access to news about everything happening around us and we’re also aware of the ways the current state of affairs can be made better. We want the world to be a smarter, greener, safer place, where people are free to express their opinions and chase their dreams. We see the future of the world where people are happy because of the way we take decisions that will help their lives. Those big shoes we had to fill aren’t so big after all, because we also have the fire to change the world. Suddenly, my classroom full of cute classmates answering eagerly seems like a powerhouse of a billion ideas, a trillion dreams and endless potential.
If I had to choose an ABG company to work with, I would choose Aditya Birla Fashion Group in the blink of an eye. That is because ABFRL has recently stepped out of their comfort zone by having companies like Forever21 and People under its umbrella, than just men’s clothing. Considering that the two kinds of stores are very different from each other, and even cater to very different audiences, it is quite interesting to see ABFRL widen its portfolio. I would want to be on the marketing team to help the company capture the market for youth-centric clothing and accessories through these brands. I think it would be quite interesting to compete with the likes of H&M, which has also entered the youth-centric clothing scene quite recently.
- Sanjana Sanjiv