I still remember the day I got my first phone. I was doing my high school and the mobile was a gift from my mother in exchange for studying and performing well in the mid term exam. In other terms it was a bribe that my mother offered me so that I wouldn’t flunk in my exams. I still remember that day clearly, me and my parents went to a Nokia showroom (yes those existed back then) and selected a model. The shop assistant asked us which connection to take for the phone. All of us were confused by that question since none of us till then had a mobile phone and connection. Hence, we asked him which one was good and he suggested Idea. I was so excited that without even thinking I replied in the affirmative. In a matter of 30 minutes, the phone along with the sim was ready for use along with a balance of 50 Rs. Yes, believe it or not that was the monthly mobile bill allowance that was allowed for me. The kid in me was so excited that I finished that balance in one night by calling up and telling all my friends. I got an earful from my father but being a good father, he gave me money for recharging. I was much more careful about the calling minutes in the future but Idea literally changed the way how I communicated with my friends. Previously we had to go through our mothers who would be sitting right next to the telephones and listening to our every word. With Idea we could now easily roam around the house and speak out of earshot of anybody. It still remains one of the biggest events that happened in my life and Aditya Birla Group had a huge role in that.
The next big challenge in my life happened when I was working. Having worked for over 3 years in the IT industry, I was getting a feeling that my career was becoming stagnant. That is when I decided to go for an MBA. In my free time post working hours, I started preparing for the CAT exam. A month into my preparation, we ran into a huge obstacle at work. There had been a change in the leadership at our client company and now they wanted an entire overhaul of all the existing systems and services being provided by my firm. We already were facing problems with high level attrition among the senior resources which left me in charge of 3 different teams working on 3 different technologies. I was totally inexperienced for the challenge since I had never led a team let alone three. I struggled in the initial days to even keep up with the client demands and we all ended up working late into the night and arriving early in the morning. Even through all the struggle of working over 14 hours a day, I still harbored my ambition of doing an MBA and I ensured that I spent at least 1 hour a day on CAT preparation. The juggle was not easy as some of the days I just wanted to drop everything and sleep but I was reminded of a quote from my favorite movie – Rocky Balboa. “Life will beat you to your knees and keep you there if you let. It is about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward”. That one quote kept me going and finally in the end I came up as the top 5 percentile in the CAT exam and joined IMT Ghaziabad to fulfill my dream. My friends see me now and tell me how good my life is going to be being part of a premier institute however nobody but me and my family will know the humongous effort it took to reach where I am today.
#ABGLP WOO ME- SEASON 2 #IMT Ghaziabad
