The prestegeous World Business and Development Award 2012 was bagged by the multi products conglomerate ITC Limited. The century old company of the nation bagged the coveted award. The award was conferrred on the giant conglomerate at the Rio+20 United Nations Summit at Rio de Janeiro.
World Business and Development Award was awarded to ITC for its transformational rural initiatives in social and farm forestry programmes in India. The only Indian company to receive this honour at the ongoing historic Rio+20 Summit, this award has been instituted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),the International Chamber of Commerce and the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) in partnership with the Netherlands Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and the UN Global Compact. ITC was among 5 large global companies to win this honour.
The British owned Imperial Tobacco Company started in 1910 transformed into ITC Limited the largest multi-business corporate enterprises in India with a turnover of around US$6 billion. The company's non-tobacco businesses, including foods, personal care, hotels, paper, agriculture, information technology and others, currently account for around 40% of its revenues.
The origin of ITC started four years earlier to 1910, 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.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’. (With inputs from internet-AarKay)
