The Success Story of ITC (Indian Tobacco Company)

 

ITC currently operates in FMCG products, personal care, clothing, hotel chains, packaging, printing, exporting, and retail of agricultural products, stationery, IT business, and many more.

This vast expansion took place under the leadership of Yogesh Chandra Deveshwar who was CEO & Chairman of the ITC group from 1996 to 2010.

In the year of 2013, he was also awarded as the best performing Indian CEO and was also among the top seven in the world.

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Origin:

ITC was started with the cigarette or tobacco business and later on moved to FMCG, personal care, and other industries.

They started their first office in 1926 in Kolkata (West Bengal) which is currently their head office and known as Virginia house.

 

They renamed their company a lot of times whenever they want to enter into a new product line like in 1970, they renamed Indian Tobacco Company Ltd and in 1974 to I.T.C LTD and finally to ITC Limited in 2001.

Rise of ITC:

ITC remains and prospered in Cigratee making business for about six decades. They have partnered with farmers of the southern part of India for the tobacco leaves and opened their first factory in Banglore in 1913.

Initially, ITC only manufactures cigarettes and outsource packaging, later in 1925 they started their packaging and printing business. After that around 1975, they partnered with the Welcome group to enter into the hospitality sector and opened their first hotel in Chennai named hotel Chola.

Currently, ITC owns more than 100 hotels and holds the third position in hotel chains in India.

ITC Kohenur Hyderabad, Telangana

Later they entered into paperboard, edible oil, and financial business. In 1996, YC Deveshwar became the company chairman and made several changes in the business to ease the management of their diverse portfolio.

He sold edible oil and financial business to other companies and taken the initiative of e-Choupal in 2000. E-Choupal helped the farmers to sell their products online which helped the ITC export business to increase by manifold.

As ITC was already there in the paperboard business they finally decided to manufacture a premium notebook named papercraft and soon launched Classmate premium copies and stationery range.

In 2002, they entered into the lifestyle retail market with brands like John Players and Wills Lifestyle.

Soon they entered into the IT business with ITC Infotech and multiple FMCG products like Candyman, Mentos, Ashirvaaad, Sunfeast, Bingo, Mangaldeep, Match Sticks(Aim & Max).

In 2005, they introduced their personal care products in the market like Vival, Savlon (acquired), Supriya, etc. Recently, they have launched  Engage deodorant, MasterChef Masala (export quality), premium cigars, etc.

All these tremendous growths in ITC diverse portfolio is highly possible with the efforts from YC Deveshwar, due to which he also got awarded with Padma Bhushan in 2011.

 

Shareholding and listings:

ITC is the part of major stock exchanges of India NIFTY of BSE and SENSEX of NSE. Also, the company’s global depository receipt is listed on the Luxembourg stock exchange.

What lies in the future?

Currently, 57% of ITC revenue comes from their agriculture export. In 2016 they made a revenue of about 51,000 crores and profit before tax of about 14,900 crores.
By 2030, ITC aims for about 1$ Trillion in revenue from FMCG only!

Facts and Updates: