We continued to advance our strategic agenda of making each of our businesses globally competitive and create new engines of growth by blending proven skills and capabilities drawn from different parts of the ITC Group.

During the year, the focus was on further strengthening the organisational vitality and competitiveness -

• Marshalling the energy of the team of over 25,000 employees towards achieving break-through performance.

• Developing the agility and creativity to speedily embrace change.

• Developing leaders who are architects of collectives of talented, passionate and diverse individuals.

• Creating a shared mindset across the organisation where employees are inspired, engaged and aligned to the Company’s purpose, mission, vision, values and objectives.

Farmers have been an integral part of ITC’s value chain for nearly a hundred years now. Since most significant and principle raw materials in ITC are agri based, we partner the farmers in securing improved productivity, assured markets and better price realisation.

Our Agri Business (including the Leaf Tobacco division) and Paperboards & Specialty Papers business have used our R&D and innovation capabilities to improve the farmers’ lives and livelihood through newer varieties and improvements in farm productivity.

Some of the important initiatives that have built capabilities and brought significant prosperity to a very large number of farmers are -

• Empowerment of farmers through our internationally acclaimed e-Choupals.

• Farm and social forestry initiatives covering over 80,000 hectares with superior, disease resisting clones.

• Watershed development.

• Livestock Development.

• Training and awareness building for adoption of integrated pest management, water & energy conservation measures and post harvest management.

For details of these programmes, please see relevant portions of this Sustainability Report or visit www.itcportal.com

We comply with all the economic, environmental & social regulations, pay all relevant taxes and monitor and report all the relevant parameters/information to the regulatory bodies. We have also achieved ‘beyond compliance’ status by adopting international best practices.

Our managers proactively participate in Government, statutory and business forums on issues relating to regulatory and public policy framework.

We believe our suppliers are our ‘partners in progress’ and are critical to ITC’s value chain. Our businesses have periodic reviews and vendor audits resulting in ongoing development. Our managers are stationed in a number of important outsourced manufacturing sites, to support quality management systems, provide expertise and support in manufacturing technology which in turn results in improved vendor capabilities and competitiveness.