Stakeholder Engagement

We continue to improve our systems to identify, prioritise and address the needs and concerns of all our stakeholders, across all businesses and units as well as at the corporate level.

Shareholders

As trustees of shareholders, we believe it is our responsibility to protect and enhance their wealth. Their primary expectations remain centred on continued profitability and growth, communication and investor servicing.

As one of India's foremost private sector companies, we have performed consistently well and since inception of the Company, have rewarded our shareholders with uninterrupted dividend and issue of bonus shares from time to time.

Our Chairman addresses and provides clarifications to shareholders atleast once a year at the Annual General Meeting, the principal forum for face-to-face interaction, in the presence of the entire Board. The Board encourages open dialogue with all the shareholders - individuals, corporates or foreign investors.

Our corporate website www.itcportal.com provides comprehensive information and an exclusive section on 'Shareholder Value' serves to inform and service shareholders; an exclusive e-mail ID has also been provided to the shareholders for direct interaction.

Customers

Understanding customers and addressing their needs and aspirations through strong long term customer relationships, continues to be the prime focus of all our business strategies. We continue to delight the customer though improvement in product quality, value added services, on time delivery and cost competitiveness.

Various innovative approaches such as market surveys, personal contacts/visits, events, customer satisfaction surveys, joint development & improvement projects, key account management, dealer feedbacks, etc were deployed to understand customer needs and preferences.

Robust Quality Assurance systems supported with process innovations, lean management, six sigma and TPM enable us to meet customer expectations.

We continue to invest significantly in R&D to develop newer products/variants. Supply chain management with emphasis on IT and infrastructure development ensures availability of our world-class products and services.

Employees

We continued to progress our strategic agenda of remaining globally competitive and creating engines for sustainable growth by nurturing quality talent and blending proven skills and capabilities drawn from different parts of the ITC Group. Each business focuses on engaging with employees through communication meetings, workplace interactions, mentoring & suggestion schemes, employees/ manager surveys and talent recognition programmes.

We have strived to attract and retain the talent workforce through various initiatives that focus on providing personal development & growth, a work culture that ensures high levels of performance, world-class learning and a conducive work environment.

We have further strengthened the organisational vitality and competitiveness through various efforts including:

Farmers

Since ITC’s principle raw materials are agri-based, farmers have always been an integral and important part of our value chain. A large part of our R&D efforts is dedicated to providing expertise & support to improve agri-quality & productivity. We partner with farmers in ensuring for them better price realization, assured markets and improved productivity.

Further details are provided elsewhere in this Report.

Suppliers

We believe that suppliers are our partners in progress and are critical to ITC's value chain. All our businesses have ensured improvement in vendor capabilities through regular formal & informal interactions, reviews & audits, sharing of best practices, joint product development, capacity building, vendors surveys & feedbacks. Our Managers directly supervise many important outsourced manufacturing sites, which result in improved vendor competitiveness.

Government

We continue to maintain ‘beyond compliance’ status by adopting international best practices. We comply with all applicable economic, environmental and social regulations. We proactively interact with Government/Regulatory Authorities in various fora on issues relating to regulatory and public policy framework.

Community

All our businesses/units regularly interact with communities surrounding their operations. Social interventions are planned and implemented on the basis of the feedback from these interactions and various 'need assessment' surveys carried out by competent agencies. These unique initiatives are detailed in the 'Social Performance' section of this Report.