ITC Limited

ITC Limited is an Indian conglomerate company, headquartered in Kolkata. It has a presence across six business segments, namely FMCG, hotels, agribusiness, information technology, paper products, and packaging. It generates a plurality of its revenue from tobacco products.

In terms of market capitalization, ITC is the second-largest FMCG company in India and the third-largest tobacco company in the world. It employs 36,500 people at more than 60 locations across India. Its products are available in 6 million retail outlets in India and exported to 90 countries.

Tobacco business and early years
"Origin" was originally named "Imperial Tobacco Company of India Limited", succeeding Imperial Brands and W.D. & H.O. Wills on 24 August 1910 as a British-owned company registered in Kolkata. Since the company was primarily based on agricultural resources, it ventured into partnerships in 1911 with farmers from the southern part of India to source leaf tobacco. Under the company's umbrella, the "Indian Leaf Tobacco Development Company Limited" was formed in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh in 1912. The first cigarette factory of the company was set up in 1913 in Bangalore.

In 1928, construction began for the company's headquarters, the 'Virginia House' at Calcutta. ITC acquired Carreras Tobacco Company's factory at Kidderpore in 1935 to further strengthen its presence. ITC helped set up an indigenous cigarette tissue-paper-making plant in 1946 to reduce import costs significantly. Then, a factory for printing and packaging was set up in Madras in 1949. The company acquired the manufacturing business of Tobacco Manufacturers (India) Limited and the complementary lithographic printing business of Printers (India) Limited in 1953.

Name
Established in 1910 as the Imperial Tobacco Company of India Limited, the company was renamed as the India Tobacco Company Limited in 1970 and later to I.T.C. Limited in 1974. In 2001 the company was renamed ITC Limited, where "ITC" is no longer an acronym.

Shareholding and listings
ITC's equity shares are listed on Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) and Calcutta Stock Exchange (CSE). The company's Global Depository Receipts (GDRs) are listed on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange. ITC is a constituent of two major stock market indices of India: BSE SENSEX and NIFTY 50 of NSE.

In July 2023, ITC Ltd.'s board of directors approved in principle the demerger of its hotel business and the formation of a wholly owned subsidiary called ITC Hotels.

As of March 2024, British American Tobacco is the largest shareholder in the company with a 25.5% stake, followed by Life Insurance Corporation of India which holds 15.2%.

Employees
As per the Annual report of the company, it had 28000+ employees as on 31 March 2020. It spent ₹2,145 crores on Employee benefits during the FY 2012–13. During the same year, its attrition rate was 12%.

ITC's Chairman Yogesh Chander Deveshwar (d. 2019) won renowned awards and recognition including Padma Bhushan from Govt. of India 2005–09 and the seventh-best-performing CEO in the world by Harvard Business Review.

Meera Shankar, Indian ambassador to the USA between 2009 and 2011, joined the board of ITC Limited in 2012 as the first woman director in its history. She is an additional non-executive director of the company.

Sanjiv Puri is the Chairman & Managing Director of ITC Limited. Puri was appointed as a Wholetime Director on the Board of ITC with effect from 6 December 2015, Chief Executive Officer in February 2017 and re-designated as the Managing Director in May 2018. He was appointed as the Chairman effective 13 May 2019. Sanjiv Puri has also assumed office as the president of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) for 2024-25.