KOLKATA: Happy 100th birthday, ITC! India’s one of the largest multi-business conglomerates completes a century of existence on Tuesday, August 24, 2010.
To mark the day, company chairman Y C Deveshwar will address its close to 29,000 employees across the country through a webcast from ITC Sonar, Kolkata.
ITC also plans to unveil a special anthem on the occasion, company officials said.
“We are celebrating the inspiring journey of 100 years and renewing our pledge to take the company to even higher orbits of growth in the future, never losing the inspiration to put country before corporation always,” says Nazeeb Arif, vice-president —corporate communications, ITC.
Also, as part of the centenary celebrations, ITC, which has a market capitalisation of nearly Rs 1,14,000 crore, is giving away one free bonus share for each of its shares held.
That’s a long, long way for a company registered as the Imperial Tobacco Company of India on August 24, 1910, with an authorised capital of Rs 1,000 in ten shares of Rs 100 each.
That was not the start of the ITC story in India though. It started four years earlier, when two English gentlemen -- Jellicoe and Page – travelled from London to Calcutta, looking for an agent for Scissors and other W.D & H.O Wills' cigarette brands in India.
They combed the business district of Kolkata, but it was hard to find anybody interested in cigarette at a time when the cult of blends, pipes, pouches with Turkish and Virginia cigarettes was in vogue.
Finally, a small-time agent with little money, Buksh Ellahie, stepped in with borrowed money from a courtesan whom he married later.
And Ellahie, as the first agent of Wills, started the journey of ITC.
A lot has changed since then. The company was run by Britishers till well after the country’s Independence in 1947.
It got its first Indian manager in 1934 in Abdur Sardar Hussain, while its first Indian chairman was Ajit Narain Haskar in 1969.
It was Haskar who took the lead in Indianising the company as well as the management, says Champaka Basu, corporate historian and author of ‘Challenge and Change: The ITC Story 1910-1985’.
“He not only explained the complexities of the Indian social, economic and political environment to the parent company BAT, but also suggested steps ITC should take to ensure its profit and growth,” says Ms Basu.
In fact, ITC started looking beyond tobacco under his leadership, when it entered the hotel business in 1975.
Today, ITC has interests in hotels, apparel, rural retailing, finance, packaged food, personal care, stationery, paperboard, packaging and printing, safety matches and even information technology.
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