These are the 10 digital initiative examples mentioned in its Annual report that establishes ITC as a Future Tech Company

Excerpts from ITC Annual Report 2022-23

1. Focus on building Future Tech Enterprise

Recognising Digital as a megatrend shaping the future, ITC remains focused on building a dynamic ‘Future-Tech’ enterprise powered by state-of-the-art digital technologies and infrastructure across the value chain adding significant impetus to digital marketing, digital commerce and digital operations. ITC today, is a pioneer in adoption of cutting-edge digital technologies across strategic impact areas spanning Intelligent new-age insights that reimagine Consumer Experience, Business Model Transformation, Smart Operations and Employee Experience.

2. Building a Digital First Culture

Foundational initiatives such as ‘DigiNext’ and ‘Young Digital Innovator’s Lab’ are accelerating ITC’s digital journey and inculcating a data driven and ‘digital first’ culture across the organisation.

3. Smart Farmers: Digital empowerment of farmers

Towards enhancing the competitiveness of domestic agri-value chains, strengthening market linkages and further augmenting value creation opportunities, ITC has successfully scaled up ITCMAARS – a crop-agnostic full stack AgriTech platform, together with a ‘phygital’ ecosystem across nine states. Over 1150 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) encompassing more than 5,00,000 farmers have been added to ITC’s network within a short period since launch.

4. Smart Insights: ITC Sixth Sense

‘Sixth Sense’, the Marketing Command Centre and Consumer Data Hub – an AI-powered hyper-personalised platform backed by a robust partner ecosystem for content and data, is being increasingly utilised to gain insights on market trends and consumer behaviour, as well as synthesise the same to craft contextual and hyper-personalised brand communication and product development. Over 3,000 content assets have been deployed leveraging this capability within a relatively short span of time at significantly lower cost.

5. Digital Trade

The digitally powered eB2B platform of ITC, UNNATI, has been rapidly scaled up during the year covering nearly 5.4 lakh outlets. UNNATI facilitates sharp and direct engagement with retailers, superior analytics, personalised recommendations of hyperlocal baskets based on consumer purchase insights, and deeper brand engagement.

6. Smart Manufacturing:

ITC is a pioneer in the adoption of Industry 4.0 in the Indian Paper & Paperboard industry. Digital and emergent technologies continue to be leveraged towards enhancing operational efficiency, reducing wastages, enabling cost optimisation and improving safety across the value chain. The Business continues to collaborate with partners from the start-up ecosystem, as well as established solution providers, in building scalable solutions that are custom-fit to business requirements. Over 100 use cases have already been developed and implemented across multiple spheres of the Business, aiding in margin expansion.

Capacity utilisation at the 11 operational ICMLs (Integrated Consumer Goods Manufacturing and Logistics Facilities – producing ITC’s FMCG products) continues to be ramped up along with focused smart manufacturing interventions leveraging automation and Industry 4.0 technologies to drive operational efficiencies, yield and energy management and further enhance safety and quality.

7. Digital distribution:

Sales through the e-Commerce channel has grown rapidly in recent years and stood at appx. 5x of FY 2019-20 levels; the channel accounts for over 10% of ITC’s Branded Packaged Foods and Personal Care Products sales.

‘ITC e-Store’, ITC’s exclusive D2C platform, is now operational in 24,000+ pin-codes and continues to receive excellent consumer response.

8. Smart Consumers:

Under the Skincare portfolio, ‘Dermafique’ introduced an AI powered smart skin advisor to provide personalised skin health analysis, empowering individuals to know their skin better and adopt solutions suited to unique skin needs.

Consumer engagement was further enhanced through Classmateshop.com, a D2C platform, which facilitates brand affinity through creative product personalisations. Industry-first propositions such as personalised videos and AI (Artificial Intelligence) generated cover designs further enhanced consumer engagement.

The Mangaldeep App, which has garnered over 1.6 million downloads, continues to play a key role in the devotional journey of consumers.

9. Digital @ ITC Hotels:

Digital investments continue to be leveraged towards enhancing guest experience, facilitating guest acquisition, augmenting revenue generation and driving operational efficiency. During the year, the Business continued to promote its full stack ITC Hotels App for Food Delivery, Room & Table Reservations, Loyalty Benefits, Exclusive Offers and more. The App has also been enhanced with room automation and entertainment control module, which has been rolled out in select hotels.

10. ITC Infotech strategic partnership to accelerate customers’ digital transformation

During the year, the company entered into a strategic partnership agreement with PTC Inc. to accelerate customer digital transformation initiatives and the adoption of PTC’s industry-leading Windchill® product lifecycle management (PLM) software as a service (SaaS).