Two decades after joining Imperial Tobacco Company as a "management pupil" in 1948, Ajit Narain Haksar, a Harvard Business School alumnus, became its first Indian chairman. A year later, the Imperial in the company's name became India, and in 1974, it became plain ITC.

The name change was done with a purpose. Haksar had realised by then that the company needed to diversify as the business environment is changing and it would be difficult - even risky - to stick to the tobacco business alone partly also because of the restrictions imposed by the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act of 1969.

Tobacco-to-hotels conglomerate, ITC, has finalised a blueprint for its own brand of 'white revolution'. The company, which plans to become a pan-Indian dairy entity, is going to set up plants across six states - Bihar (the first plant will be commissioned in Munger this year), Uttar Pradesh (possibly in Saharanpur), Punjab (in Kapurthala), Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

KOLKATA: ITC Ltd has developed a shelf-ready packaging solution for consumer goods where the pack itself turns into a retail shelf, reducing the retailer's investment on shelves, optimising space and attracting consumer's attention faster, but likely increasing costs for marketers.

The tobacco-to-hospitality-to-consumer goods conglomerate, which also owns South Asia's largest packaging unit, believes its new packaging solution can transform FMCG packaging the way Swedish packaging major Tetra Pak did for beverages and dairy industries.

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), the country's biggest private oil company and ITC, the largest cigarette maker, have lost over five per cent each in an over 2,500-point Sensex rally after election results in May.

Powered by funds flowing in from foreign institutional investors (FIIs) and domestic mutual funds, the markets have been trending up, with the S&P BSE Sensex and the CNX Nifty marking fresh highs.

Tobacco-to-FMCG conglomerate ITC has replaced Tata group's IT giant TCS as the country's most admired company on a Fortune magazine list, which has got as many as 19 new entrants including Cognizant, Birla group firm Idea Cellular and discom BSES Rajdhani Power Ltd. In the latest list for the year 2014, ITC is followed by engineering and infrastructure major Larsen and Toubro (L&T), another FMCG giant Hindustan Unilever, carmaker Maruti Suzuki and public sector bank SBI among the top five most admired companies in India.

NEW DELHI: The S&P BSE Sensex plunged as much as 86 points in trade on Wednesday following muted trend seen in other Asian markets. The fall in the index was led by losses in ITC, HDFC Bank, Tata Motors and L&T.

Tracking the momentum, the 50-share Nifty index also came under some bit of pressure but was trading above its crucial psychological level of 7700.

Diversified conglomerate ITC has raised the prices of select cigarette brands like Classic and Gold Flake Kings by up to R10/pack in the wake of hike in excise duty on cigarettes in the Budget.

"Prices of select ITC Cigarette brands have been increased and new stocks are expected to hit the market shortly," an ITC spokesperson said.

ITC is ready to enter the e-cigarettes business, but intellectual property rights (IPR) issues are coming in the way, said ITC chairman Y C Deveshwar.

“We are in all readiness as far as e-cigarettes are concerned but there are some IPR issues. There is a new government now and we would like to engage with the authorities on the matter,” he said while replying to a question during a press conference.

Meeting Street expectations, tobacco-to-hospitality major ITC has reported net profit of Rs 2,186.4 crore in the June quarter - a growth of 15.6 per cent compared to Rs 1,891.3 crore in the year-ago period.

Net sales grew 25 per cent to Rs 9,164.4 crore against Rs 7,338.5 crore in June 2013.

Diversified group ITC today expressed willingness to set up a paper manufacturing unit in Telangana with an investment of Rs 3,500 crore.

This was conveyed by top officials of ITC to Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao during a meeting here, said an official release.

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