Beyond Tobacco

Y.C. Deveshwar has been hugely successful in using cash flows from the tobacco business to build multiple drivers of growth.

Y. C. Deveshwar has been successful in using cash fl ows from the tobacco business to build multiple drivers of growth

WE DIVERSIFIED AT A TIME WHEN THERE WAS NO THREAT ( TO THE TOBACCO BUSINESS). AS A MATTER OF FACT, YOU SHOULD DO THINGS WELL AHEAD OF THE THREATS EMERGING”

More than two decades ago, Y.C. Deveshwar had just taken charge as the managing director at ITC when a senior executive came up to him to inform him about his resignation as ITC had decided to sell the international commodities trading business that he was heading. It so happened that after completing the negotiations, Deveshwar changed his mind (to sell the business) — and so did S. Sivakumar, the executive.

That would be the defining moment for ITC and its future. For, Sivakumar went on to conceptualise, build and lead the highly complex agri business, which has not just transformed millions of rural lives through e-Choupals and created a new era of technology-led farming but is also the bedrock of most of ITC’s current and future businesses — FMCG, retail, food, exports, chocolates, dairy, among others.

This foundation of the ITC of today was laid more than two decades ago when Deveshwar revisited ITC’s vision. It was clear in the mid-90s that sin goods such as cigarettes and liquor would come increasingly under regulatory pressure and discouraged with high taxation.

“Without ceding ground in that, in the interest of all our stakeholders, ITC had this aspiration to make an increasing economic contribution to