Why Aditya Birla Group is big in your life?
The Aditya Birla Group, a US $44.3 billion corporation, is one of the Indian multinational conglomerates which has many legacies. It operates in many sectors like metals, textiles, carbon black, telecom and cement. The vast operations of the group span 34 countries in North and South America, Africa and Asia. The group was founded by Seth Shiv Narayan Birla in 1857. As the Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla says "Leadership lies at the heart of knowing what we stand for", the group believes in integrity, commitment and passion. Most importantly, under its CSR initiatives, ABG looks after education, health care, sustainable livelihood, infrastructure etc. Some of the key highlights of its CSR initiatives are - it works in 5000 villages, has reached close to 8 million people, runs around 5000 medical camps in 20 hospitals, operates school for around 46000 children, immunized 70 million children against polio, provided solar lamp to around 4,50,000 school children and mid-day meals in over 250 schools. As an MBA student and future manager, such mind-boggling statistics are an inspiration to me. It reminds me that business exists for the society and the primary aim of any corporation is to give back and contribute to the growth of humanity. Making a difference in people's lives is what ABG stands for. It inspires me to follow the same path in the future. In addition to all these, ABG's famous brands like Allen Solly, Peter England, Van Heusen and Louis Phillipe provide us an exclusive range of products in optimal price ranges. None of these brand compromises in terms of quality. Moreover, Pantaloons is the best when it comes to multi-brand fashion retail chain. All these factors combined has made ABG one of the inspiring forces in my life.
How you overcame challenges to achieve your ambitions in life so far?
Life is all about overcoming challenges and showing grit and determination on the face of adversity. Challenges test our resilience towards difficult or unknown situations. When I was working on my start-up, I was facing various such difficulties. We were a group of three co-founders right out of college. With a scarce investment and no previous business experience, we had little idea of how to approach the situation. The problem we were looking to solve was making grocery shopping more convenient. We operated out of Kolkata, so back then, there was very less number of players operating in the segment. Hence we sensed an opportunity. But the problem of launching the startup was manifold. We had meager investment, hence could not maintain inventory. Spending a large amount on marketing was also not possible. Moreover like any e-commerce venture, it was going to be very operations heavy business. Quick delivery and efficient customer support were necessary to stay in the competition. Thus managing all these things without any prior experience and that too with less capital was the utmost challenge. When faced with multiple challenges, starting small and taking one step at a time is the most important thing. So we started approaching local vendors to convince them to tie up with us so that we can operate on a zero inventory model. Initially, it was very difficult, but with the right approach and some persuasion skills, we finally succeeded. Then to solve the problem regarding operations, we first decided to address a smaller area rather than the whole city. The plan was to start from a small target segment and then expanding from there. Initially, we decided to focus on marketing strategies like social media marketing, banners in front of some selected malls and distributing leaflets across the area we targeted. All these could have been managed at a reasonable cost. Thus putting all plans at the place and with a lot of determination, we were finally successful to start our journey of entrepreneurship.
