“Failure is not fatal, failure is inevitable. If you don't fail, it perhaps means you aren't taking enough risks.” - Mr. Kumar Mangalam Birla
Challenges define a person, whether they overcome it or not, either way, they decide what the person would be after they have experienced the odds. The months from October 2017 to February 2018 became the ones that would define the future me.
On the morning of October 2017, the phone rang, it was my buying agent on whose orders I had regularly exported frozen seafood from the firm that I had found, but this call was different from the usual. He informed me that the market had crashed for frozen shrimps and the buyer in Vietnam had backed out, with a massive inventory of value-added, highly perishable goods and a limited network all I could think was the amount of loss that the company would incur and how I would pay my suppliers.
After contacting most of the buying agents across India and receiving similar or worse feedbacks I understood that the only way out was to book the loss and clear my inventory because we were not in a state to hold such an inventory for long, most of the major players were doing that but ours being a relatively new firm took the hit hard. After the export at new prices which had completely wiped out our profits and a part of the capital, we repaid the suppliers and were sitting idle thinking on how to go forward from here as there were no orders from our buying agents and the monthly expenses at the factory were piling up.
After understanding the situation and consulting various experienced professionals in the Industry for almost a month, we decided to freeze the fishery products of other exporters at a discounted rate so as to minimize the monthly losses, this process went on till February and the market sentiment slowly started picking up. Still sceptical but slightly more confident now, we decided to start the production for our own exports and by March had shipped the cargo successfully. The shipment covered a major chunk of our losses and brought back the stability which was much due from a long period of time.
This made me realize how important it is to be disciplined during tough times and how complex the management world can get.
Why Aditya Birla Group is Big in your life
I still remember that black kit with a golden crown on it, it read “Louis Philippe - The Upper Crest”, the 17-year-old me was excited on what was inside this fancy kit as it was a birthday present, out came a classic white shirt! This was my first experience which I remember with one of the many products of the Aditya Birla Group. Now a loyal enthusiast of the brand, that white shirt for me defined what quality clothing can be and how one can differentiate themselves from the crowd based on sheer quality alone. This value I believe is present in all the products and services which the Aditya Birla Group offers and has made it a premium global conglomerate, in a league of its own. Recently I came across the recycling awareness for beverage cans carried out by Novelis Inc., world’s largest recycler of aluminium, a part of the Aditya Birla Group, the message was that beverage cans, can be recycled infinitely. The fact that every 3rd aluminium can is made from Novelis aluminium, gives an assurance that growth is possible by sustainable methods and reiterates the well-established fact that Aditya Birla Group is big in everyone’s life, in one way or another.