ITC targets number 1 position in FMCG sector - The Times of India
July 27, 2013
The diversified ITC group is aiming at over Rs 1-lakh crore turnover from its non-cigarette FMCG business by 2025-30, chairman YC Deveshwar has said.
"This is evidently an audacious aspiration and one that may not necessarily be realised in my own lifetime. I, however, wish to place ITC firmly on the path to such accomplishments," Deveshwar told reporters after the company's 102nd annual general meeting here on Friday. "We would even take our FMCG brands global," he added.
Deveshwar said ITC is on the path to becoming India's largest FMCG company. The Kolkata-headquartered group's non-cigarette FMCG business, which comprises packaged food and personal-care products, had turned profitable for the first time in the last quarter of 2012-13 with a profit of Rs 11.87 crore. It, however, slipped into losses in the first quarter of the current fiscal.
Deveshwar said the group's non-cigarette FMCG business would break even this fiscal and become financially self-reliant from the next. "If we continue to grow at this pace, and looking at past trends, cigarette business could eventually become a small part of our revenue," he said.
ITC's rival Hindustan Unilever, which closed 2012-13 with revenue of Rs 25,810 crore, is targeting Rs 50,000 crore by 2015. On whether ITC would enter laundry and oral-care as well, Deveshwar said the company would enter into every possible FMCG category.
