“Here you go Soumit, I have made some hot aloo paranthas for you so that you don’t remain hungry in the long 10-hour flight. Oh yes! Please store away that foil roll on the top shelf, I can’t reach that high”, my mother said, while handing me over the hot roll of aluminium foil, filled with magic. We were flying off to Milan for a three-week International Immersion Programme at SDA Bocconi School of Management. As I stretched my hand up to store the big roll of Freshwrapp on the shelf, she noticed the new black T-shirt that I had bought from Louis Philippe. “Wow, you look handsome! Be careful beta, girls might start falling for you”, she quipped. Later, on my flight to Milan, as I completed my meal and started to fold the aluminium foil into place, my gaze stopped on the foil, and I started wondering “How do they manufacture these things? Where do they do it? How do they manufacture it?” Then I remembered the packaging of the Freshwrapp box, it had a small but noticeable logo of Aditya Birla Group. “Wow! They make such mundane kitchen items as well?” My friend Rahul, who was sitting beside me in the flight told me, “Yes, they do. Not just foils, Hindalco Novelis also manufactures other aluminium products like sheets and cans. The parent company Aditya Birla Group, does more. That premium looking T-shirt you’re wearing is from Louis Philippe, an ABG brand. Even the international SIM card that you bought from the Vodafone store at the airport, Vodafone-Idea which functions in India, is the 2nd largest telecom service provider in the world! Possibly the tires of this aircraft might also contain carbon black from the same group. Thus ABG impacts your life much more than you think.” “Wow! How come you know so much Rahul?”, I asked, flabbergasted. “Simple!”, he said,” just keep your eyes and ears open. Actually, I want to major in Operations and ABG is my dream company. Hence I was looking up this data from their website. Even you can find such data about your dream company to help you in placements”.
The word ‘placements’ made me a little unsettled. Placements in any B School, especially in an IIM are of cut-throat competition, with everyone vying for their dream jobs and dream companies. For a fresher like me, it would be a huge challenge competing against the seasoned lot. “How would I match up to the corporate pressure? Would I be able to do justice to the responsibilities given to me?”, all these thoughts made me nervous. To counter that, I started to recollect all the struggles in my life that I encountered to come this far. The journey from a humble engineering college in Kolkata to an IIM flashed through my mind. I remembered those sultry nights, solving different kinds of questions, analysing mock tests, and those innumerable heartbreaks. Managing college placements, CAT preparation, semester courses, whilst maintaining a steady GPA was a really difficult task. Things were not smooth on the personal side as well, leaving me to fight a lone battle with my personal as well as professional life. The screenshots of different college websites, displaying the dreaded combination of words “NOT SELECTED”, ravaged through my mind. But as they say, ‘If you deserve it, you shall attain it”, I might have been a deserving candidate. Hence, at the fag-end of the admission season, when I had lost all hopes for studying management and had started to search for jobs, I received the mail that every MBA aspirant awaits, the one that starts with “Congratulations!”. I calmed down, saying to myself, “If I have come this far to join an IIM, I can surely cover that last mile to make it to the finish line”. Reassuring myself, I dozed off, to be fresh and ready for the challenge in Milan.
