When I think of Aditya Birla Group, the ad commercial of Ultra Tech Cement comes to my mind. I distinctly remember Ultra Tech Cement Boards and logos painted on huts and on highways when I would travel by train. The Yellow Color was imprinted on my mind, and if people said ‘cement’, this was the first thing that would come to my mind.
Tracing back to my school days, I remember my my mom pack me school tiffin, wrapping sabzi bhaji in Freshwrapp foils. That was such an important part of our routine: to pack food with utmost care to school and feeling special about the silver foil.
It’s no doubt that ABG group has been a part of my life since childhood. I hadn’t realized this until now but there are so many products of the company that have been a dominant part of my family.
I am particularly fond of the brand Van Heusen who have most elegantly tailored formals and semi-formal suits. I remember my brothers bragging about their new blazers. I am also a proud owner of formal clothes collection.
Brands like Peter England, Pantaloons, Forever 21, Allen Solly and Liva have been almost a very regular part of my life. During my childhood days when these were the major brands in the nearby shopping plaza. It’s quite interesting to note that these brands are still prominent and have bigger and better showrooms and have newer collections. The fact that these brands are ever growing and have a wider reach is quite impressive and a customer like me is prouder to use its products.
CHALLENGES IN MY LIFE
I have always wanted to become a change maker. The decision of getting into working with an NGO like Teach For India (TFI) right after my graduation was a transformational journey for me. While all the graduates made their way to sit for placements and write their GREs and GMATs after 4 years of engineering, I chose to be different as I was not inclined to join the mainstream. I saw no purpose and whatever I was doing didn’t seem to incline to the kind of person I was and wanted to be. With opposition coming in from all directions, I wasn’t sure if I could take that decision to get to the ground level and work for India.
I particularly had inclination towards serving the society, in any small manner I could, in the hope of uplifting some section of the society. But who really does social work after engineering? Where is the ROI? These were some words thrown at me.
One would wonder what the challenge here could be? It was listening to your voice. That was an age where I was quite dependent on parental decision to take all my decisions regarding education, etc. I knew that independence was valuable to me and a stance like this will probably get my parents to question my career path I was going to take. It took a great mental shift for me to independently take a decision to apply for TFI Fellowship. I threw myself into an opportunity like Teach For India and was very delighted to be a part of 2015 cohort. Being a teacher always gave me joy and I had developed a passion for teaching since childhood when I would teach myself and my friends maths and science. It used to be so much fun. I had not really envisioned what the challenges would look like until I had started teaching at this particular NGO and saw the reality of the state of education in the underprivileged communities.
It was two years of work, day and night and never stopping kind; we teachers would keep working hard to make sure we adopted different approaches and customize our teachings for different students and understood their ecosystem to enable us to reach them.
What was quite surprising was how my parents, who were unsure of the path I had taken, slowly started to transform; looking at me work for these kids made them realize the kind of person I was and that my personality shone for the first time in their lives. They gradually started to support me with my work at home and talked about me with pride around. This. Took 2 years. And now they know I am independent enough to take decisions, such as an MBA, when I felt it right to do so.
