Brands of India: Introduction and ITC
Written by Angshu on 10:16 AM
Introduction:
TNMG or ’The Next Marketing Guru’ is my next attempt at serious blogging. Using this brand new blog I want to bring all the learning in management in general and marketing in specific to the practical world. The objective here will be to bring the cutting edge knowledge from academic and research world to the benefit of all of us facing practical issues in business and consumption world!
With that objective I start this series namely ‘Brands Of India’ which is to analyse Indian Brands across industries from primarily marketing and advertising point of view. From time to time whenever applicable we will try to bring in the financial and strategic aspects of the company and brands that are relevant and important for particular brand and the context.
With no more general-gyan, we start the series with FMCG industry which is unanimously the most active battleground of biggest marketers of India.
FMCG in India:
With so many leading companies and popular brands this is the industry whose advertising activities occupy most of space in the public media! In fact ‘soap operas’ which feature most advertisements in most popular public media of television – was a brain child and contribution of the FMCG industry.
To find out the biggest companies in Indian FMCG sector we started with ‘BSE FMCG INDEX’. There are twelve companies which are part of this index. Following table lists these twelve companies along with their market capitalization as on 6th April 2009:
Sl# | Company Name | Market Cap. (Rs. Crore) |
1 | I T C Ltd. | 68128 |
2 | Hindustan Unilever Ltd. | 49494 |
3 | Nestle India Ltd. | 15427 |
4 | Dabur India Ltd. | 8279 |
5 | United Spirits Ltd. | 6644 |
6 | Colgate-Palmolive (India) Ltd. | 6097 |
7 | Tata Tea Ltd. | 3651 |
8 | Marico Ltd. | 3575 |
9 | Britannia Industries Ltd. | 3507 |
10 | Godrej Consumer Products Ltd. | 3289 |
11 | United Breweries Ltd. | 2402 |
12 | Ruchi Soya Inds. Ltd. | 480 |
(Source: CMIE Database)
From the above list, the top ten companies are selected for the purpose of analysis in the 1st phase.
ITC Ltd.
Introduction
ITC started its journey long back in 1910 under the name of 'Imperial Tobacco Company of India Limited'. During the first few decades of its operation the focus of the company revolved around Cigarettes and Leaf Tobacco businesses. But during the seventies the company ventured into different businesses including hotels and paperboards. During the nineties the company started Agri Business Division and the new millennium saw ITC venturing into Greetings Card, Lifestyle Retailing, Information Technology, Packaged Food, Matches, Agarbattis (incense sticks) and many more. In the last few years ITC expanded its portfolio to include snacks and personal care products as well. So, over the years the company has become a truly diversified business house with interests spanning across industries. We included ITC in this document as being a FMCG leader but our basic objective is to study the marketing and advertising in Indian context – so along with FMCG, we will analyse the other business in which ITC has key presence. The ITC financial statements divide its business into four main categories which are shown in below diagram:
FMCG business of the company is divided into following seven sub-segments:
Though ITC has interests in so many diverse businesses - cigarettes has been the main money earner for the company till date. In 2008 Cigarettes alone contributed more than 85% of company’s profit after tax.
Fact File
Founded | 24 August 1910 |
Mission | “To enhance the wealth generating capability of the enterprise in a globalising environment, delivering superior and sustainable stakeholder value.” |
Positioning statement | "Enduring Value. For the nation. For the Shareholder." |
Gross Turnover (2007-08) | Rs. 21356 Crore |
Profit After Tax (2007-08) | Rs. 3120 Crore |
Number of Employees | 25,000+ |
Logo |  |
Tag Line | ‘ITC. Touching your life. Evevryday.’ |
Chairman | Y C Deveshwar |
Headquarters | Kolkata, India |
Website |
(Source: Company Website and Wikipedia)
Brands
Following diagram shows the key brands of ITC across segments:
This list is taken from “The ITC Brands” section of ITC website. A strange thing to note here is that - though cigarettes are the main money earner for ITC none of its cigarette brands is featured in this list. This is because of the latest legal restriction that prohibits advertisement or promotion of cigarettes in public media.
In the next section, we will take the key brands, see the intended targeting and positioning of those brands and then find out how that has evolved into the advertising and marketing communication.
[To Be Continued…]
8
comments
| Posted in »
Advertising,
Branding,
Brands of India,
FMCG,
India,
ITC,
Management,
Marketing
| Posted in »
Advertising,
Branding,
Brands of India,
FMCG,
India,
ITC,
Management,
Marketing
8 comments: Responses to “ Brands of India: Introduction and ITC ”
By @ngshu on September 6, 2009 at 11:58 AM
First comment from gtalk:
"
shindesandip: awesome effort on TNMG
really good stuff
me: thanks..man
shindesandip: a must read for marketing lovers
"
By misha on September 6, 2009 at 12:06 PM
nice to see so much effort being put in collating all important information of marketing...
a must read for placement ongoers!!
By @ngshu on September 6, 2009 at 12:39 PM
Thank u so much Misha! :)
By chatamrs on September 6, 2009 at 1:23 PM
Angshu.. this is great man..
I liked this... ITC has come a long way but the way this blog describes its anotomy is awesome...
Lo0king forward to see more like this... thums up man.
By Manan Shamihoke on September 6, 2009 at 2:14 PM
Angshuman Ghosh: The next marketing God. :-)
Nice blog dude. Informative.
By jainneha on September 7, 2009 at 6:44 AM
wow!!! too good infoo :)
n half of my crisp work will also be done :D
By jas_bhatia on September 7, 2009 at 6:46 AM
really a commendable wrk..nice strt..
i can smell a prof in the making...:)
By @ngshu on September 7, 2009 at 8:35 AM
Thanks so much...Amresh, Manan, Neha and Jassi!! :)