Aditya Birla Group is the most international of country’s major corporations. The group has 72 subsidiaries across 34 countries and possess market leaders in Viscous Staple Fibre Industry (Grasim), Aluminium and Copper industry (Hindalco), Cement and adhesives industry (UltraTech) and Insulators Industry (Birla NGK). Other new markets of the group include software development and IT services (Birla Technologies Ltd.), Power Generation market and Insurance markets (Birla Sun Life Insurance). Aditya Birla Group always remained committed to its structure as highly diversified conglomerate.
Being a native of Nagpur I’ll start my journey with Aditya Birla Group from Nagpur Metro (NMRC). Dreams of 2 million city dwellers are supported by the two strongest pillars of ABG, “UltraTech Cement” and “Hindalco”. Two market leaders from their respective industries are contributing in easing the lives of humankind by providing quick and efficient commuting across the city. Next big brand that people from different strata across Nagpur and other major cities associate themselves is “The Pantaloons”. “Pantaloons” has a wide range of merchandise for men and women with superior design capabilities that are combined with unparalleled quality, innovative product development and customer centric products which makes it a one stop shop to satisfy clothing needs for majority of Indians. Next big brand in the line is the cellular network of Aditya Birla Group- “Idea”. The world of 21st century generated a need of smartphone along with a high-speed internet service provider. When it comes to uninterrupted internet service “Idea” always stands an edge over other network providers. Vast geographic region covered under the “Idea” cellular network enables people from across India to connect digitally with the world. ABG has always adhered to its tagline of “Taking India to the World” and has exemplified it throughout its journey.
The list of ABG products that people associate themselves with is endless and above mentioned are just snippets of market penetration that the group has. The group truly exemplifies the tagline “Big is for all”.
How you overcame challenges to achieve your ambitions in life?
The greatest challenge that many of us face in our lives is “Inertia to Change”. One such challenge that was faced by me and my team at our workplace. Our company was into manufacturing precision sheet metal parts in automobile and aviation industry, initially we were only manufacturing the parts of automobiles. This segment at first generated good revenue and we were the only ones in the region providing such services. But gradually four other similar firms stepped in to market and our market share decreased considerably. At this very time, HAL released for a project to outsource manufacturing of all sheet metal parts of aircraft engine “SHAKTI”. This was the time for our company to switch market and take a leap into manufacturing precision aircraft parts. But unfortunately, because of inertia to take risk we chose to stay back and concentrate on automobile parts. Had we switched to aviation industry then we would have had generated 1.5 the revenue that we generated in automobile industry. This mistake was eventually recognised by our company and we entered the aviation market after ending continuously 3 quarters in considerable loss. This taught us a lesson on incurring opportunity cost due to Inertia to Change and not being able to come out of our comfort zone.