Part A: Why Aditya Birla Group is big in my life?
As I sat down to write this article, I realised that I was wearing an Allen Solly t-shirt, a brand which is a subsidiary of Aditya Birla Group. When I was contemplating and gazing out of the window beside my table, I saw a sack of UltraTech Cement leaning against my garden wall. This is when I immediately pictured the UltraTech Cement television advertisement which had the theme of ‘Build Beautiful’ where the workers in fashionable clothes built an architecturally stunning building while an impressive music played in the background. The tagline of UltraTech Cement, “The engineers’ choice”, is ringing in my mind. The business of ABG spans over 34 countries and ventures in textile, telecom, carbon black and much more which makes me wonder how diverse the business plans and culture must be.
ABG is rich in innovations and research. From introducing fluid fashion cloth ‘Liva’ to designing sustainable business practices, ABG has been keeping up with the market and environmental changes. One day after watching Kangana Ranaut in the 'Liva' cloth advertisement, I curiously searched about the specialty of the material and I was quite fascinated to read about it. Not only is the ‘Liva’ material light-weight, soft and easy to maintain, but it also has an eco-friendly variant called ‘Livaeco’. The products of ‘Livaeco’ by Birla Cellulose are produced keeping nature conservation in mind. They make sure that the water wastage is minimum and the raw materials are used only from the certified forests. It gives immense satisfaction to know that one can conserve nature while being voguish.
Birla Carbon, a flagship business of ABG, is the world’s leading supplier of carbon black additives which is used in the tyres of the vehicles and many other rubber products that we use in our everyday life. Without carbon black, the rubber tyres wouldn’t last for more than a hundred kilometers. Such dependent are we on carbon black today. If the demand of carbon black is so high, it is of utmost importance that the production process should be sustainable to reduce the impact on the environment. Birla Carbon has won many awards for following sustainable production of carbon black.
By using products of ABG, we have been quietly contributing to environment conservation. It inspires us to be nature friendly and to do our own part to contribute to sustainability.
Part B: How I overcame challenges to achieve my ambitions in life so far?
Right from the day a child learns how to speak, she is asked about what her ambitions are. With all innocence, a child always tends to choose the profession of his parents. It was no different for me. Hailing from a family of doctors, I always preferred buying the doctor-nurse playing kits over the kitchen play sets. Although I could not pronounce the word ‘stethoscope’, my fondness for it kept growing. I would take my mother’s stethoscope, plug it in my ears and put the chest piece on any object that came in front of me to find out if it had any sounds within it just like we humans have our heartbeats. I was quite fascinated. But this lasted only till I joined my first ever summer camp at the age of 6.
That is when I was introduced to a computer for the very first time. Holding a computer mouse and painting on the MS Paint software felt much more exciting than coloring with crayons on paper. I was bowled over by the simple fact that I could record my voice in a computer and listen to it over and over again. At a very young age, I learnt multimedia animations. That was when I decided that I would become a computer engineer when I grew up. I aced at learning the various programming languages taught to us at school like Basic, LOGO, C and Java. Little did I know that my path to becoming a software engineer was filled with craters and humps.
As a science student in my 11th standard, I had to choose either Biology or Information Technology as my elective subject. I was convinced by my family members that I should go for Biology as IT has no future, given that the recession period had its impact. I did the dissection of plant stems and frogs, but I always had coding in the back of my mind. I would sometimes come back home after a Botany or Zoology class and open my computer and try to learn or do something new. I cleared the entrance exams for some engineering as well as medical colleges. That was when the I had to take a decision for life, whether I wanted to be a doctor and keep the trend going in my family or to follow my dreams of becoming a software engineer. Many of my relatives and neighbours kept counselling me to choose a medical college and about how I could do noble work for the society if I became a doctor, how much blessings I would get and how much respect I would earn.. Although deep down their hearts, my parents wanted me to pursue medical, they understood my passion for coding and let me free to choose my path. I was in a deep dilemma. I knew my parents would be the best guides for me if I chose to become a doctor. Their expertise in the field would help me learn a lot from them. What if I chose engineering and not do well in it? What if I would not be able to build a good career in software? I had the fear of being mocked by the society and repenting later for choosing the wrong career path. Similarly, I feared I would not enjoy studying medical subjects and if I ended up becoming an unreliable doctor.
I realized that I would not be happy doing something I never wanted to. I would never want to carve a career out of a field which didn’t satisfy me. After contemplating for some days, I chose to follow my passion. I overcame the fear of being ridiculed by the society.
I pursued engineering in Computer Science and did many projects as I had aimed to in my college career, where I learnt a lot more than I had imagined. I joined a software company where I loved working and got to work on many real time projects that gave me an opportunity to unleash my creativity in the web world through software development. Now I aim at using my technical skills along with my managerial skills to help the local artists of my state flourish.
The hurdles in my path made me realize that I should pursue my dreams. They taught me a lesson about who would stand by me no matter what I choose to do in my life. Hurdles don’t always present themselves as lack of opportunity as we often tend to think of them. We should be able to use them to our advantage.
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