The Tenacious Aditya Birla Group - Nayana Suri, NMIMS Mumbai

The building in which I’m sitting and writing this was, most likely, built with Ultratech Cement. Parts of my laptop (on which I’m writing this) and mobile phone were made with Hindalco metals. Birla Copper helps my fridge, television, microwave, air conditioner work and work safely. Grasim helps deliver power safely, efficiently and effectively across the country.

The point has sufficiently been made. Aditya Birla Group is in my life, it has been in the lives of my parents and will be in the lives of my future children. Having said that, mere presence is not what is striking about you, ABG. It is how each product website has articulated its own raison d’être, all of which are about delivering impact to all lives and to do so sustainably.

What is big about you isn’t your size, it isn’t your pockets. It’s your values, your drive and perseverance to make a positive difference in the lives of everyone you touch and it is an admirable and fortuitous feat that you touch all lives.

Aditya Birla Group is big in my life simply because Aditya Birla Group recognises that an ordinary customer like me, is a big part of theirs.

Overcoming Challenges

In my twenty something years, I’ve lived in many cities across five different countries, witnessed death, a traumatic family situation, and failed more times than I can count.

Each of the events mentioned above have been challenging to different degrees.
When I failed in engineering college and faced two choices- either write and pass exams during the summer semester or repeat a year, I obviously chose to re-appear for my exams. Luck wasn’t on my side and during exam week, I was diagnosed with dengue. Again, I was faced with two choices- to channel resilience or to resign to ‘fate’, whatever that is. I chose resilience, graduated on time and have continued to choose resilience at every given opportunity.

Anti-fragility is the name of the concept that says that systems increase in capability as a result of shocks and stressors.
I hope that is a word I can use to describe myself for in my experience, I’ve only been better off after my failures. When I quit my job and chose to study for B school exams, my family, very suddenly, faced an emotional and traumatic plight, followed by the death of a grandparent, followed by entrance exams, all in a span of two months. My parents never let me quit- not when I wanted to leave engineering, not when I fell ill, not when I was grieving. They emphasised that they would hold my hand and support me through it but that I wasn’t to internally give up, and I didn’t. I got into business school, I’m living away from home for the first time and I’m thriving. What they gave me was confidence and the ability to build anti-fragility into my daily life and how thankful I am to them, for it.

The biggest realisation that comes from these life experiences is that human beings spend a disproportionate amount of time living in the past or dystopian future, completely washing away their present, thereby bringing that very future they didn’t want, into their present. I have done that and I think I still do it, sometimes. I, however, work to continue to bring my awareness to the fact that I have the present to make an impact, a difference in not just my life but in the lives of people that I interact with.

It is my purpose that brings me back to more important things than fear and disappointment, my purpose is to unlock human potential for a happier world, part of this purpose entails unlocking my own potential and designing my own life.

Businesses have such a big impact impact on the society we live in and vice versa, this is a relationship that can achieve common goals for success and I hope to use my work to build, cement and celebrate that success with utmost devotion to financial and social welfare.

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