"One feels very blessed to be born into a family like the Birla family, which is a household name in India, which stands for tradition, is yet contemporary, stands for trust." The words of Mr.Kumar Mangalam Birla sums up the first thoughts that crossed my mind when I set out to write on the impact Birla group has had on my life and the society as a whole. One among the elite list of pioneering industrialists of the pre-independence era, Seth Shiv Narayan Birla is the founding father of the Aditya Birla group. The seeds of the MNC were sowed in 1857 which now spans across 35 countries employing 1,20,000 employees worldwide.
The impact that the Aditya Birla group has had in my life through their products is very direct and the value delivery has been very imminent to me as well as the local community that I belong to. Hailing from an agriculture centric town, Mudigere, in Chikmagalur district in Karnataka, we had to commute 35 kilometers to find the nearest supermarket. More Supermarket, a part of ABG retail was the first to set up a supermarket in our small town. More's arrival changed the face of the retail market in our town. Prices of Various commodities, especially vegetables and fruits stabilized. It also brought with it the convenience of shopping under one roof.
I was a kid in 10th grade when I traveled to Sarala Birla Academy, Bangalore as part of the Coorg Public School athletic team for the ICSE sports meet. The infrastructure, facilities and the overall management of the event by the students and staff of Sarala Birla Academy was top class. It exuded the quality that the education being imparted at the institute possessed. The event remains etched in my memory and those few days at the institute began to make me understand as to why the educational institutions run by the ABG group are held in such high regard. As the Chairman puts it, "There are two roadblocks in the way of transforming India into an economic giant and one of them was education. I believe that if education is privatized at the primary and secondary level, a lot of our problems will be answered." His vision in the field of education has given rise to premier institutes in India including the coveted Birla Institute of technology and science, Pilani.
Coming from a farming background, it is very heartening to see the ABG group contribute immensely to the farmers in the Indo-Gangetic plain. Through Indo Gulf Fertilisers (IGF), ABG aims at providing complete solutions from sowing to harvesting to the farmers in Punjab, Haryana and Uttarkhand. IGF not only manufactures the full range of fertilizers at their state-of-the-art facility in Jagdishpur, but they're also engaged with farmers regarding the application of the same.
With Corporate social responsibility becoming vital to organizations, the ABG group is leading the way in the same. ABG has been involved in providing education, vocational training, establishment of Jan Sewa hospitals, setting up of village camps and farmer engagement programs. The textile industry has been their forte and ABG is revolutionizing the industry with the introduction of eco-friendly fiber Viscose. Their efforts have been recognized by various awards like the CSR Activist of the Year Award by FMPCCI, Govt. of Madhya Pradesh and Best CSR Impact awards by NGO Box (http://www.grasim.com/csr.aspx).
Already in possession of the right balance of vision and values, I believe that the Aditya Birla group would truly play a vital role in India's march towards being a superpower and the future center of the world.
My Story #IIMTrichy
Hailing from an agricultural background in the heart of Western Ghats, I moved out at a young age to a boarding school in Coorg, Karnataka to pursue my education. In the 12 years at boarding school, perseverance and adaptability developed as the two primary aspects of my personality, they continue to be the pillars of my personality. Having been brought up in Chikmagalur and then going to study in Coorg, I always happened to be at places with rich flora and fauna, places which were blessed with natural abundance. I would realize this only after I moved to Bangalore for my further studies and then to work.
My parents being coffee growers, I had always heard from them and the community around me how hard it was to be an agriculturist given the uncertainty of crop outcome every year. It made sense. The final crop depended on various factors that were out of a person's control. Untimely rains, changing weather, global warming, etc. were taking their toll on the growers. The future of agriculture as the primary source of livelihood looked very bleak. At this point in time, I was very passionate about agriculture and had also developed interest in forests, the local flora and fauna and I regularly explored the hills around. Being in Bangalore for studies and then later moving to Pune to work at Accenture made me realize not many people had visited let alone experience life in the Western Ghats. Thus started the dream within me to open up our farm to visitors and have them experience life in the coffee-growing belt of the Western Ghats.
The obstacles to realizing this dream were mostly mental ones. The biggest challenge was to allocate funds from the agricultural cycle onto this project. If the returns were bad, it would prove to be disastrous. With the support of my parents, I went ahead and established the Agri – tourism business under the name ‘River Cross Estate Homestay'. The business involves hosting people from across the country and having them experience the culture, cuisine and the local agricultural practices thereby providing an opportunity for the urban population to experience the rural lifestyle firsthand. The setup consists of two cottages in a scenic location. I would take one large group up to 16 people at a time. Each person would pay for a package that would cover all their meals and stay at our place along with the agriculture tour around the plantation. This also brought to fore my mother's cooking skills which the guests absolutely love. The business also enabled me to sell our produce directly to the guests instead of middlemen at a much better price.
As I conclude this paragraph at my beautiful hostel room at IIM Trichy, my parents are busy hosting guests back at the farm. It gives me great satisfaction to look back on the journey in the last two and a half years since the business was established. It also instills in me the confidence to take on bigger challenges in the times ahead.
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