Strategy must place stakeholder at centre: Sanjiv Puri

ITC chairman Sanjiv Puri believes in the simplicity of strategy. When he articulated the ITC Next strategy in 2018, the idea was to identify future-proof vectors across its FMCG, agri, paperboards, and hotel businesses by keeping consumers and stakeholders at the centre. “Strategy needs to be consistent with the objectives and with the path that has been followed in the past…. very rarely do strategies completely change,” he says.

In every business the company not just strengthened the core, but also identified adjacencies and categories for the future. “In paperboard, for instance, our core is value-added paperboard, which we continue to fortify. The first adjacency we got into was plastic substitution. That led us to create plastic substitutes on paperboards with proprietary coatings,” he explains. In FMCG, the company has a well-defined premiumisation strategy across food, personal care, and stationery.

Puri says strategy can’t be good merely on paper. It has to be executable too. Puri’s strategy to make ITC future-ready involved transforming from being hugely dependent on the tobacco business for several decades (which was adversely impacting its valuations) to today where its ‘non-sin’ businesses comprise around 67% of total revenue.