ITC to invest Rs 15,000 cr over next five yrs

ITC would be investing Rs 15,000 crore over the next few years and would further enlarge ITC's economic contribution, company chairman Y C Deveshwar said at its annual general meeting here today.

The aim was to achieve leadership status in all its businesses, he told
shareholders of the company at its annual general meeting here today.

In the last decade, shareholder returns, measured in terms of increase in market capitalisation and dividends, grew at a compound rate of over 30% per annum, he pointed out.

ITC became a 'water-positive' and 'carbon-positive' corporation on the back of several energy conservation measures, usage of carbon neutral fuels and carbon sequestration through large-scale agro-forestry programmes and was making rapid strides towards attaining 'zero solid waste' status.

ITC would pursue value creation across the Triple Bottom Line - economic, social and environmental. ITC would follow multiple drivers of growth.

The entire organisation had been realigned to a new focus which he called the amalgam of 'Vision, Values and Vitality'.

Vision he described as "a commitment beyond the market" and required each of ITC's businesses to attain leadership on the strength of international competitiveness to ensure sustainable wealth creation through contribution to the 'Triple Bottom Line'.

The defining trait of ITC  was its deeply 'Indian' character that aligns
corporate strategy to national priorities and this he called value.

Vitality in ITC was manifest in many ways including the strengthening
competitive capability, the deepening consumer insight, the breakthrough innovations in products and processes, the ability to rapidly absorb knowledge and harness technology, the widening bandwidth of distributed leadership, a growing nimbleness to proactively manage change and adaptiveness to continuously leverage market opportunities, he added.

The ITC hotel business had embarked on the next phase of aggressive
expansion that would unveil, initially, the finest hotels in Bangalore and
Chennai.

The paperboards business was also poised to embark on an ambitious expansion plan to service the growing demand for high quality pulp-based products, including a range of coated and uncoated papers.

The ITC e-choupal had 10 Choupal are already operational, while nine 9 were in an advanced stage of completion and its rural retailing initiative will be scaled up by another 40 Choupal Saagars in the next 12 to 18 months.

Packaged Foods business drew upon the unique sourcing capability of the ITC e-choupal, the cuisine expertise of ITC Welcomgroup, the innovation capacity resident in the ITC R&D Centre and the traditional strengths of branding, trade marketing and distribution to provide distinctive sources of competitive advantage in the marketplace, he said to illustrate the structure of the new ITC.

Other FMCG products also leveraged its resident competencies. While the synergising of in-house skills is contributing to the rapid growth of the new FMCG businesses, such growth in turn has also spurred new opportunities for the other businesseslike foods, development and pilot marketing of organic agri inputs for farmers.

ITC was keen to take the lead to involve its consumers as partners in
progress by bundling CSR as part of its unique value proposition, he added.

Deveshwar said investments of over Rs 6000 crore towards enhancing the competitiveness of its businesses support led to direct employment to the tune of 28,000 across the Group and indirect employment across the value chains of nearly 5 million people, whose livelihoods are substantially linked to their association with ITC.

Over the next 5-7 years, ITC intended to create nearly 6300 water harvesting structures and thereby extend critical irrigation to more than 50,000 hectares of rainfed arable land.