A dream that Seth Shiv Narayan Birla saw 162 years ago with the start of cotton trading in the small town of Pilani is now something which the whole nation feels proud of. The Brand is now a synonym of trust and world-class quality. From a couple planning for a baby to a son looking to make father's day memorable for his father, Aditya Birla Group has something to offer and something on which they trust blindly in form of Pantaloons. For an old man who is spending his life earning on his dream house to a teenage going for his first date, Aditya Birla Group with its brands like Ultratech and Planet Fashion is the only entity to depend on. Today while I am writing this article watching India Vs New Zealand Cricket World cup Semi-Final sitting in my IIM Ranchi hostel Vodafone Idea Limited network is the only lightning-fast 4G network which I could trust for live streaming.
Such is the trust of the "Power of Five " Values which Aditya Birla Group carries in all its offerings that today when an Indian Mom in some far part of India packs food for his little Kid ready to take his first Big Step in life she trusts on none other than Freshwrap. The same trust in Aditya Birla Capital helps us to plan for the bigger things in life some planned and some totally unplanned and sad.
Our values provide us with our roots and they provide us with our wings.
- Mr. Kumar Mangalam Birla
These wings have given the group a reach to 35 countries with around 120000 people getting their Bread and Butter from ABG Group and millions of others getting impacted indirectly.
Who are we? Indians!
What do we want? Olympic medals!
How about excelling your own kid in a sport? "Pehle usse engineer toh banne do!"
But it was surely not my thing.
This joke is something that almost all of us coming from middle-class families can easily relate to. Being someone coming from a modest middle-class background and for someone who has been doing pretty well in academics, even a thought of choosing something other than engineering or a Medicine as a career is assumed a crime. But I had different dreams being someone who got excited every time he heard of an entrepreneurial venture, going for engineering was not a dream option at all. After struggling to prepare to get into the elite IITian club for two years and nearly making it . The revolutionary finally took birth inside me. The decision to get admitted to a course which none of my friends or family had heard of was really a challenge but I had decided to take it .
This small-town boy was also dreaming of doing something different in some other part of India after more than 150 years of when Seth Shiv Narayan Birla started the Aditya Birla Group.
The process of convincing parents and the extended family to allow me to go for a course in the field of management was not as easy as expected though the course was one of the best in its field in India. The wave of emotions and dreams that they had seen for me though for my betterment were too big to ignore. But whenever I fall in such situations there is someone who always urges me to listen to my heart without listening to the world and he is none other than my father. He was the only person who stood by me and one who recognized that I had different dreams in life. I had no option to look for a reserved ticket as I was supposed to report the day after tomorrow and for someone coming from Bihar, getting a ticket for Delhi for the very next day was unmanageable. I had made my mind that I will travel anyhow by maybe sitting near the gate perhaps luck was in my favor that day. The person who had booked the seat where I had kept my luggage didn't come and I somehow negotiated with the TTE to get that seat on a train which was overloaded with people on wait-listed tickets.
The situation which I faced and many of us had faced when deciding on career options forced me to work on solving this problem for other students with few friends of mine through a venture during my undergraduate degree. Though it was not a big success, it taught me some immeasurable lessons in business which will surely help me whenever I start any venture again. At last, a quote which I follow in life and which has helped me overcome many big obstacles in life.
"Never say, I can't" because "you always can" and "you will".
