Aditya Birla Group the mammoth Indian multinational conglomerate, headquartered in Worli, Mumbai, India operates worldwide in 35 nations with an armada of more than 120,000 global employees . Seth Shiv Narayan Birla the founder of the behemoth set the foundation in 1857. Aditya Birla Group sells in-house and other branded apparel via brick-and-mortar and online stores. It is a parent entity for Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail Ltd which acts as the inhouse point of sale for the following big names Louis Philippe, Allen Solly, Van Heusen, Peter England and People via their individual brand stores and through other multi brand outlets. It also operates my favorite childhood getaway “Pantaloons”. Another brand associated with them is “Forever 21” . Aditya Birla Group has played a vital role in improving my understanding of fashion and confidence. To give you some background I worked in Deloitte Bangalore which has it’s office in Divyashree Technopolis Yemlur. Here comes the surprise element the Aditya Birla Group is also situated in the same tech park rather just 100 meters from my place of work.
Now going to how the Aditya Birla Group has been a great influence on me. I recall an incident when my then roommate and me were having a gossip over tea regarding the buildings in our techpark. This guy stood up and said “Yeh Aditya Birla ki building kitni pyaari hai na jee karta hai udhar kaam karun jaake”. And this guy is pretty hard to impress as he thinks the Deloitte building has no design sense. The guy now studies in NID which is a premier institute for design in India. After this comment I was pretty sure ABG has a vision for their future .You ask why? Because they have a vision for the aesthetics of workplace which is pretty rare nowadays. To bring into perspective ,I came across many employees of ABG in the past 3 years and was able to chat with them and mind you those guys are some of the best brains when it comes to how they perceive the world. Starting from their dressing sense to what nots the only thing they can think about is how to make the world look more colourful. What else can you expect from a team this made me really love the work culture of Aditya Birla and I hope they have this light in them forever.
I’ll tell you a story about myself which might interest you . I once had a solo trip to HAMPI which is a place in Karnataka known as “Little Goa”. Theres’s this place in Hampi called “The Hippy Island”as you can figure out from the name this place is pretty fun to be at. Even though I am currently pursuing an MBA which would make people think that I am good at time management,I am going to make it clear “I am not and have never been ” . So when I visited Hampi it was Diwali season , everything was vibrant and colourful barring one thing “Meri Kismat” which wanted to have fun with me. We’ll know how in sometime . So the thing with “Hampi Hippy Island” is that the bus station is just 100 meters from the island if you travel via the ferry or else you would have to take a 20km long route via road. So I was pretty chilled out that I’ll be able to catch the ferry anytime in the evening and get back to my bus on the day of return and I had planned my return on Diwali. Little did I know that people actually celebrate Diwali in Hampi (pun intended).So I was screwed as there was no one willing to take me in the ferry . One thing that was against me was that I had 2hrs to catch my bus and no ferry to go by. What should I do now? Cry ? or maybe take the longer route via road. Little did I know the auto guy was going to charge me 5000 bucks and me being the poor planner had run out of cash with just 1000 bucks left.That was when I met Mila and Jim who were from Israel and were in a similar situation as mine.But the catch was they were being charged 15000 bucks for the same thing as they were foreigners . So I was able to crack a deal with Mila and Jim and the autodriver which for me was the best deal till date . I went to the autoricksaw driver and asked him to reduce the fare to 3k and then we split the bill equally amongst us. So it was 1k for each of us and happy people all around. Man you should have seen the smile on their faces .PRICELESS!!