My story with the Aditya Birla Group starts well before my birth, well maybe…. just around that time. Born in a business class family and that too a business of readymade garments I had always been fascinated about the day I would start my own business or get to work in the same retail store that my father had established. Our store in Agra is a multi-brand retail store where we do sell the products by Madura Fashion Group, owned by Aditya Birla Group. We almost have had all the brands including, Allen Solly, Peter England, Van Heusen,etc and though I had always had an inquisitiveness about why these names sound so unfamiliar unlike other brands I never questioned anyone unless I found about it myself.
With years passing and me starting to understand things I was so firm about the idea of doing my own business and getting into Delhi University was like meant to be. Being at such a place provides you ample amount of opportunities and abundant resources to work on anything that you want. Having had been associated with the textile industry with family linkages I started to work on my idea of a business that involves renting goods and with goods we meant clothes as well, in fact suits, traditional wear and all other party clothes, which one requires to wear just once, were the first products we wanted to foray into. When you talk about business suits for men the first brand you would go to has to be Louis Philippe and Van Heusen and so did we. Went to the brand office and explained them the idea. We vaguely had any idea about what we wanted to do, how would we price it, the business model etc. but, we wanted to get a green signal from the brand before we venture into it and that is what we got, A GREEN SIGNAL!
With just me and 2 of my friends on board, we started to research and develop a concrete business model for the idea we had. Worked on the financials, the supply chain, the revenue model, procurement sources and all other specific details, we had a little believe that this could work! Before getting into the market we wanted to be sure about it and thus, we started looking for opportunities; b-plan competitions were the best place to try onto. Applied to some 5-6 business competitions and finally got a call to come and present at a Delhi University college competition, sponsored by The Aditya Birla Group (yes, again). This competition was not about some prize money or investments that we would get but, the selected ones through this competition would have an opportunity to get incubation and apply for investments under the Government of India Start up initiative. To get funds to kick-start the business are surely very important but, at that point we were looking for guidance and thus, we prepared extensively for this one. PowerPoint presentations and excel sheet were all on-point before the competition day arrived.
The presentation went well, judges were happy with the idea but, we didn’t get the first place yes, we didn’t win. But, as they say; you get you want and not what you don’t, judges saw an opportunity in our idea and offered us the incubation. That’s it, that’s what we wanted, we didn’t want the first place tag, we wanted guidance and thus, accepted the offer without a doubt.
That was the January of year 2018 and here I am, at one of the India’s best business schools a year and a half later studying MBA. Well, why did the plan change? Why not go for my business, the one I had always wanted? Umm.. let’s just keep this for another day and for the time just remember that sometimes it’s not the right time and you should always wait and prepare for when the right one comes.