Why is Aditya Birla Group Big in my life?
Aditya Birla Group has been a symbol and tracker of sorts for the prosperity brought about in our family by the hard work and smartness of my parents, followed by my elder sister. Coming from humble backgrounds of a village in Tehri District of Uttarakhand, my parents have been through irregular streams of income like many households in the country, yet always investing smartly. They invested in their children primarily in the quality of education they get. Much like Aditya Vikram Birla, albeit on a small scale, they had the vision and the ability to judge better investments. The journey with ABG started with our first home and their trademark ‘The Engineers Choice’ cement in 2003. The ‘Irado Mein Jaan Daal De’ slogan resonates so closely with the progress that followed. The advent of mobile phones and the first Nokia 1100 in the household ran on an ‘!dea’ Sim. The connectivity provided by telecom services was a huge gamechanger for many household and business’ and ‘!dea’ became big in our life. My sister went on to join a public sector bank, and I graduated from NIT Jaipur, joining an IT giant for banking solutions. As time progressed, so did we and are today regular customers at Pantaloons and Peter England. The partnership that started over 15 years back today enables me to be a part of one of the Premier Business Schools in India. Like Aditya Birla Group, we have grown, and I’m sure millions of others have too. The quality addition has been unparalleled, and hence, Aditya Birla Group is big in not just my but in almost every Indian’s life.
Overcoming challenges in life
The biggest challenge thrown in my way has been overcoming the difficulties after dropping out of a ‘government’ college just 3 months into the curriculum. After dropping out of my first engineering college in November 2013, I faced an uphill task as I stared at JEE exams 5 months away without any preparation to fall back on. The added challenges of a society that doesn’t take dropping out kindly and misery visible in my family’s reaction are things that matured me as a person. I fell back on help from my friends, Suyash Gairola in particular, who was taking a drop for the same. The self-preparation and strategy discussions with him were vital to me as we went on to score 221 and 214, respectively in JEE Mains 2014. I joined NIT Jaipur, and as luck would have it, Suyash joined Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani Campus (yes this is how big Aditya Birla Group has been in my sphere of life). Taking responsibility for my decisions and not resigning to subpar situations in life is one of the reasons I can hold my head high today. I still feel sorry for the amount of storm that my parents faced for not having any control over their ambitious kid, but I hope I have repaid their faith in me with my actions. The phase increased my belief in my abilities and taught me the importance of knowing and valuing your opinion over the opinions policing of the society at large.