What would have otherwise been a normal business day had soon turned out be a monumental one in the Indian Banking sector. Aditya Birla Group with its payments bank (Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank Ltd) had commenced operations. For me, I still remember vividly, it was a day of jubilation, as the one brand that I had always associated with integrity and good character had now forayed into the banking space. With brands in the carbon black, cement, fashion, financial services, metals, textiles, and chemicals, Aditya Birla Group has been one of the backbones of the Indian economy since independence, ever since our forefathers laid out the foundations for an independent India and unlike many others, the Aditya Birla Group has always stayed true to the values it identifies as the “Power of 5”.
What makes the Aditya Birla Group special is not the fact that it is one of India’s largest and most successful conglomerates, but the fact that it has served the community in a way that only a few others can boast of. With multiple CSR initiatives in the healthcare, education and infrastructure sectors, it has indeed made a difference, and been a part of many-a-stories of hope. Only recently, it was announced that a Euro 15 Million scholarship programme was created by ABG to support education of 10 full-time MBA candidates (five recipients would be Indian, and the other 5 from different countries) at the London Business School, and with that announcement, the Group reaffirmed its place in the heart of millions. As an Indian, I am immensely proud and I can only hope that Mr Kumar Mangalam Birla can hear all of us, as through this campaign we say “Thank you ABG”.
Part B
The biggest challenge I had to overcome was to leave behind how my educational background defined me, and how the world just decided that This is it! The career path that I needed to follow and nothing else.
Having done Psychology and being a Science student before that, there was no expectation of me getting into management in the first place, but I wanted to, and that was partly due to the startup I had ended up being a founding member of. I continue to strive to be an individual with a burning passion for psychology, albeit not professionally as many would have hoped for. Today, as a business management student at SDA Bocconi Asia Center, I may not practice psychology professionally anymore, but I still continue to live my passion with the occasional skills that I get to practice subtly, giving it my best every time I get to brush them up in any way. One amazing trick I learned was that, I was able to identify the bridge between my skills that I acquired as a psychologist and put it to good use in the management field as a whole. That I believe is the biggest challenge that I overcame to come where I am currently, having made peace with two completely different sides of myself and find a balance to the scales.