For a brand to become an integral part of a person's life is, in essence, its fulfillment of its value proposition. Aditya Birla Group (ABG) which is basically the third-largest Indian private conglomerate. Its brands in cement, fashion, insurance, and financial services are quite well known. However, the brand which stuck with me, the brand which became an integral part of my life was Ultratech Cement, which was acquired by ABG from L&T in 2004. In order for me to describe the importance of the mentioned brand in my life, it is of utmost importance for me to describe how important a home is for any individual. A home is associated with memories that are beyond comprehension and yet so close to heart. It makes us feel wholesome, it protects us, it becomes a family member. Each wall, each side, you just know it as if it has become a part of the body. This unbounded yet bounded connection with an object made of bricks and woods is strengthened by the most important ingredient that is cement. And for me, when I was contributing my share of earnings to my father’s mission of constructing a house of our own, Ultratech Cement played an important role and even though it is visually impossible to identify it’s strength, it is quite visible in the strength of the emotions that flow between the walls. It is not just a chemically produced entity used to keep bricks together, rather it’s a spiritual manifestation of human strength that keeps everything together.
Challenges I faced in life and how I overcame it:
It started in January 2018, I had written a novel but wasn’t getting any publisher’s or literary agent’s attention. As I was coping with this failure, in May, my mother got severely ill. Frustrated by the feeling of being a victim of a chain of bad events I decided it was high time to get out of this. So, I took up CAT preparation. I was just getting into the hang of it then all of a sudden, in July 2018, my father was diagnosed with a neural disease which crippled him of the left leg. And just the day before he was diagnosed, I quit my job at a prominent IT firm. So, by August, I was left with no job in hand, ill parents, broken heart and the task of preparing for CAT. I was scoring only 70% percentile in the mocks, the frustration of and the fear of losing grip me so much that there was no option for me to succeed. And now I am proud to say that I got into one of the top B schools in the first attempt of CAT itself.
It was this fear that led me to managed to take good care of my parents, managed to calm my broken heart and managed to concentrate on the study while all these things were going on. I remember a dialogue from the movie The Dark Knight Rises, Batman was not able to come out of the pit, the pit was a symbolic representation of our fears, insecurities and all the negative emotions associated with it. Tired of failing to get out the pit, Batman asks the old man in despair, “How do I get out of this?”. To, which the old man replies, “Make the jump as the child did, without the rope”
I believe that’s how you rise, by giving yourself no other option but to succeed. Because success is not about defeating the rest of the people. It's about defeating yourself. I defeated myself and I won. And now, every-time I face a problem I rise…I rise from inside.
