Itc E-Choupal

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Farmers Empowerment
– An ITC Way
“Internet will extend electronics marketplace and make it ultimate go between the universal
middleman.”
- Bill Gates
ITC’s Brief History
ITC was incorporated on August 24, 1910 under the name of ‘Imperial Tobacco
Company of India Limited’. The Company’s ownership progressively Indianised, and the name of
the Company was changed to I.T.C. Limited in 1974. In recognition of the Company’s multibusiness
portfolio encompassing a wide range of business – cigarettes and tobacco, hotels,
information technology, packaging, paperboards and specialty papers, agri – exports, foods,
lifestyle retailing and greeting, gifting and stationery. The full stops in the Company’s name were
removed effective September 18, 2001. The Company now stands rechristened as ‘ITC Limited’.
ITC is one of India’s leading private companies, with annual revenues of US$2 billion. It is
one of India’s foremost private sector companies with a market capitalization of nearly US$ 18
billion and a turnover of over US$ 4.75 billion. ITC is rated among the World’s Best Big
Companies, Asia’s ‘Fab 50’and the World’s Most Reputable Companies by Forbes Magazine,
among India’s Most Respected Companies by Business World and among India’s Most Valuable
Companies by Business Today. ITC also ranks among India’s top ten ‘Most Valuable (Company)
Brands’, in a study conducted by Brand Finance and published by the Economic Times. ITC’s Agri
– Business is one of India’s largest exporters of agricultural products. ITC is one of the country’s
biggest foreign exchange earners (US$ 2.8 billion in the last decade). The Company’s ‘e-Choupal’
initiative is enabling Indian agriculture significantly enhance its competitiveness by empowering
Indian farmers through the power of the Internet.
Its International Business Division was created in 1990 as an agricultural trading
company; it now generates US$ 150 million in revenues annually. The company has initiated an...