The Birlas

Family Blueprint.

- Jeena J Billimoria

RAJASHREE BIRLA: Rajashree, Chairperson of the Aditya Birla Centre for Community Initiatives and Rural Development, the Aditya Birla Group’s apex CSR body, was just 10 and Aditya Birla was only 14 when they got engaged. The two married when she was 17, in 1965 and says that, “my fiancé was taking a lot of interest in my education. I was doing science at Fatima College in Madurai, and he said: ‘What will you do with science?’ So I switched over to arts.” Their son, Kumar Mangalam was born in 1967, so she couldn’t take her BA exams, “but the environment at home was so supportive that I later completed my studies and graduated,” says the matriarch. Unfortunately, Rajashree was widowed at a young age when Aditya passed on at the age of just 51. Becoming a huge support system to her son, Kumar Mangalam when he had to take over the company, Rajashree has been an incredibly strong woman over the years. She oversees the group’s social and welfare activities across 40 companies, has received a Padma Bhushan for her invaluable social work (which has helped thousands of villages and millions of people). She is also actively engaged with the NGO Population First, where the focus is to save the girl child and spread awareness against female foeticide and is one of the country’s leading philanthropists.