Beyond Tobacco

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

- Rajeev Dubey

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 the economy,” says Sanjiv Puri, CEO & Executive Director and Deveshwar’s successor. That time, ITC had revenues of around ₹800 crore and market cap of ₹100 crore. In its 95th year, in 2006, ITC had revenues of around ₹5,000 crore and market cap of ₹5,000 crore. In 2017, in its 106th year, revenues are around ₹57,000 crore and market cap ₹3.2 lakh crore (as on Jan 2, 2018). Deveshwar has been at the helm for much of this journey.