A BIG moment in my life was my MBA interviews. Struggling to find a good set of formals, I walked into the nearest store of Van Heusen and purchased my first set of business formals. Dressed up in a formal suit for the first time in my life, I understood why it is called as power dressing. Naively I asked my friend, “why is it that these foreign companies are so good at making such high standards clothing.” He looked at me, smiled, and said that the suit I am wearing is manufactured by an Indian company – the Aditya Birla Group. I was dumbfounded thinking about how a cement manufacturing company forayed into fashion.
A company with humble beginnings right after independence is now a market leader not only in India but also worldwide, and we often overlook their contribution to our lives. With sheer hard work and dedication, they have put themselves in the league of the Fortune 500 and generate a major part of their revenues from the international market, thus carrying the brand of India to foreign cities. I am not only a loyal customer for its fashion brands at a personal level but also aspire to be a part this seven-decade long legacy or at least learn from their mottos and imbibe some of their teachings into myself to be as successful as them. ABG is not just a company but a nation’s pride. And I find ABG in every sphere of my life and a brand to which I can relate to.
During the first year of my engineering, I got addicted to an online multiplayer video game called Age of Empires. I used to play the game for almost 14 hours during weekends and 10 hours during weekdays. My grades started falling. I realized that I was addicted to this game during my second year. It took me more than two years to control myself from not playing Age of Empires, which is a huge achievement of mine. Initially, I started trying to reduce the number of hours I used to play AOE. After more than one year, I was finally able to limit my playing hours to just 4 hours a day. Then I started setting targets for myself to play only three games in a day. It then took me another one year to finally play AOE on my own free will. Finally, during my fourth year, I was no longer addicted to AOE. Now I have entirely stopped playing this game.
Another ambition of mine was to get into a B-school. After writing cat 2017, I got a good score, but then I got rejected in almost all B-school interviews in 2018. So I analyzed what must have gone wrong during the interviews and prepared myself for the interviews that I will give in 2019. But before that, I had to prepare again for the exams and crack them. So I had to constantly work hard for six months, crack the exams, and attend the interviews. This time during the interviews, my last years’ experience and proper preparation have helped me get a seat in NITIE Mumbai.
