There are many minute and gigantic forces that knowingly or unknowingly align themselves to make you succeed. One such gigantic force in Indian space is Aditya Birla Group. This huge conglomerate is involved in so many industries that it is almost impossible for it to not have touched your life unless you live a cave and never come out! Being a technology guy, honestly, I never really cared about the brands, their parent companies or the impacts they have on our lives. I couldn’t care less until a year ago when my brother was pursuing his MBA. He would prepare for his competition and quizzes by asking me those tough brand questions only to answer them himself afterwards. So I got curious and began learning about the brands, their work and their effects on the lives of people. After I came to know about this competition I began researching about the Aditya Birla Group and within just a few clicks I realised that ABG has been a part of my life and I wasn’t even aware. Let me just share a little such incident where ABG was a part of my career stepping stone. I was in my last semester of BTech and the companies had started to pour in to recruit new engineers. We were supposed to wear business suits. I was nervous about the interview and wanted everything to be perfect. After all, it was my first professional interview. I went through many brands to find my first special suit. At last, I decided to buy the Van Heusen business suit because of its perfect fit. That perfect fit suit gave me the confidence to tackle my interview. When you feel confident about yourself, you can literally take on anything and that Van Heusen suit made me feel me. No surprises that I got the job at Infosys Limited as a system engineer. I got the job in the first company I applied to. I didn’t even realise that ABG had a huge role to play into all of this until two days ago.
There comes a time in everybody’s life where we have to take tough decisions in order to sort things out. This involves prioritising things that really matter against things we think matter. I was working in Pune, Maharashtra and my father was posted in Punjab. There was no male elder in the family to look after my ill grandmother. My brother was studying in Haryana and it was becoming really difficult for him to manage his studies with all the travelling he had to do on a weekly basis from Delhi to Haryana to look after our grandmother. As the situation deteriorated my father asked me to quit my job so that I can be available at home at all times. Initially, I was very wary of the decision. I gave numerous suggestions such as to hire an all-time nurse or to take grandmother to Ludhiana with him. Nothing panned out and I had to quit my job. It was really hard for me as I had just started making progress in my professional field. But she is definitely more important than any job. Although it was difficult to quit my job, I did do it after prioritising what really matters. After almost 4 months of regular sessions with the doctors and all the care, my grandmother started getting better. Those were tough months for our family but it all worked out in the end. Now I had to find a new job. I started looking for a job but could not clear any interview. It was getting really frustrating and I started doubting myself. After giving half a dozen interviews, I finally landed a job with a growing services company. The job profile was not in my comfort zone. I knew nothing about sales and marketing. So I had to work harder than my colleagues to reach at their level of competence. After some months things started to fall in place until I decided to write CAT to get into an MBA college. Again the hard work started to prepare for the exam and life became hectic. There were times when I would not understand certain topics but this time I was prepared to dealing with stressful situations. Now, as I understand, it all runs in a circle. Whenever you want to do something new, you have to go through some uncomfortable situations.
