WHY ADITYA BIRLA GROUP IS SPECIAL IN MY LIFE?
The roots of the ADITYA BIRLA GROUP can be traced back to almost a century before INDIA gained independence when SHIV NARAYAN BIRLA started trading in cotton in 1857. The role of the company is indispensable in the Indian quest for gaining independence and is also tied with the nation’s economic history. Today, the ABG is a corporation worth over 40 billion USD with over 1.2 lakh employees operating in 36 countries. The group also owns the largest cement factory of India.
But as it is rightly said, “Your legacy after you leave the world is not decided by how much cash you stash but by how many hearts you touched”. To my mind, the above quote perfectly captures the essence of ADITYA BIRLA GROUP. My relationship with the group has been a rather intimate one. I can associate my childhood with it. The freshness of the delectable lunch that my maa used to pack in the coruscating FRESHWRAPP aluminum foil still makes my mouth water. The house that we bought saw extensive use of ULTRATECH CEMENT because we were driven by the ideology that it will make the home EMI proof. The IDEA Cellular network resonated exceedingly well with me. My family switched to Idea because of the exquisite network that it provided. I still remember that in my formative years, there were a series of advertisement of the network with SIRJEE(Abhishek Bachchan) educating the Indian public over social issues like caste feud, overpopulation, “education for all” and of course spreading awareness through “No ullu banawing” campaign. Apart from that, I have emotional memories attached to me with ADITYA BIRLA HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY Ltd. My father was hospitalized due to anaemia for 11 days but we didn’t have had to bother about the hospital ward fees, the medicine bill, the blood test report charges, etc. The company was taking care of it. Inadvertently, the company was taking care of my father.
The Aditya Birla Group holds a deep importance in my life. The company matters to me and hopefully I will matter to the company someday. Fingers crossed!
SOME CHALLENGES OF MY LIFE AND MY LESSONS AND LEARNINGS:
“The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by the sudden flight but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upwards in the night.”
The above mentioned lines by H.W. Longfellow is aptly depicts the trait required to become a man of success and most importantly, a man of value. My life has been in constant play with what the world calls success. Success is a wonderful thing but it tends not to be something that one can learn from. We enjoy it, we love it and perhaps we even deserve it. However, we don’t acquire wisdom from it. I always say that I am blessed to encounter a lot of failures quite early in my education life.
I would like to start with the year 2014 when I first appeared for JEE (Mains). I qualified for JEE (Advanced) but couldn’t secure a rank there. I took a drop and again appeared for JEE (Mains and Advanced both) in the year 2015. I was able to secure a rank was it was not a respectable one. As a result, I had to make a decision to opt out of engineering and go for a B.Sc. I took admission in the University of Allahabad for their B.sc (Mathematics) program. In my sophomore year(2016), I decided to write CAT-17. I made a commitment to myself that I will put in indefatigable work hours so that the results will atone for the previous sins that I committed. So, I worked diligently and wrote CAT-17 with confidence. When the results were out my overall percentile was 98.04. I would had been happy, right? Hell, no!. Even though I had a good overall percentile score, the sectional DI/LR percentile was 65.73. I didn’t get shortlisted by any of the single IIMs or other great B- schools. My other B-school exams were equally sad.Needless to day, I was devastated. I didn’t know what to do now. I knew that I genuinely worked hard for it but result echoed of the different story.
I was clueless and decided to take a break and switched back to reading poetries and literature. Incidentally, I encountered with a great poem “SHREE KRISHNA CHETAVANI” by the legendary poet “RAMDHARI SINGH DINKAR”. One line etched on my mind permanently,
“SAUBHAGYA NAA SAB DIN SOTA HAI,
DEKHEIN AAGE KYA HOTA HAI”.
My zeal was reinvigorated. I decided to give an another shot to B-school entrance exams. I worked again, improved upon my goof-ups, consulted the experts and seniors, took all the exams. And right now, I am writing this article by sitting in my hostel room of the INDIAN INSTITUTE OF FOREIGN TRADE which ranks among the crème de la crème business schools of India.