ITC investing in DigiTech across Marketing, Commerce, Products and Operations: ITC Annual Report

ITC continues to build a dynamic ‘Future-Tech’ enterprise powered by state-of-the-art digital technologies and infrastructure (‘Mission DigiArc’) across the value chain adding significant impetus to digital marketing, digital commerce, digital products and digital operations. ITC today, is a pioneer in adoption of cutting-edge digital technologies across strategic impact areas spanning Consumer Experience, Business Model Transformation, Smart Operations and Employee Experience.

FMCG Business

Across ITC’s FMCG Businesses, the power of digital is being leveraged to drive superior consumer insights & innovation, deepen consumer engagement and enhance brand loyalty. Strategic interventions continue to be made towards delivering delightful brand experiences seamlessly using an ‘Always On’ approach across touchpoints through personalised journeys mapped to individual needs, preferences and context.

Cutting-edge digital technologies including Industry 4.0, Advanced Analytics, Big Data and industrial Internet of Things (IoT) continue to be deployed towards strengthening ITC’s real time operations and execution platform, enhancing productivity, driving efficiency and cost agility. These initiatives are anchored on the key pillars of synchronised planning and forecasting, agile, resilient & efficient supply chain, smart buying & value engineering, smart manufacturing and smart demand capture & fulfilment. Strategic investments have been stepped up to build platforms of insights by harmonising and integrating large and isolated datasets powered by AI/ML technologies and ‘human-centred design’ & visualisation tools.

The year marked a major step in advancing the Business’ digital maturity journey. With the vision of having a connected digital ecosystem, the Business has launched Real Time Consumer Data Platform. With the objective of consistently engaging with consumers, the Business is also building ‘always-on’ brand experience digital platforms, rooted in the respective brand philosophies.

Trade Marketing & Distribution

TM&D remains at the forefront of leveraging cutting-edge digital technologies and building a digital ecosystem to draw actionable insights for sharp-focused interventions, augment sales force capability, drive productivity, improve market servicing and deepen connect with retailers.

Technology enablement in the form of customised mobility and routing solutions, machine learning algorithms, data science models, data analytics comprising insightful visualisation tools and predictive analytics are being increasingly leveraged to enable speedy and accurate data capture, enable real-time informed decision making and aid in optimisation of trade & marketing inputs to enhance visibility and sales. The machine learning models have been augmented to sharpen outlet level SKU recommendations. Use cases for self-service analytics tools have increased to analyse data and present insights which are digitally integrated into business decisions, resulting in intelligent digitalisation of business processes.

The digitally powered eB2B platform of ITC, UNNATI, has been rapidly scaled up during the year, covering nearly eight 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.

To cater to the digital payments and financing needs of customers and retailers, ITC has entered into strategic collaborations with banks and Fintech partners. These solutions have been seamlessly integrated with the UNNATI platform to digitally empower and unlock business growth for ITC’s trade partners.

Paperboards & Specialty Paper Business

ITC’s Paperboards & Specialty Papers Business is a pioneer in the adoption of Digital technologies. In recent years, the Business has embarked upon a comprehensive Digital Transformation Programme across the vectors of manufacturing, supply chain and support services to achieve operational excellence, enable decarbonisation of operations, drive improvement in profitability and improve safety across the value chain.

The multi-dimensional digital interventions encompass Industrial IoT for Smart Operations, Integrated Data Platform, AI/ML algorithms for manufacturing process optimisation, AI/ML based image analytics and IoT based crop monitoring & advisory, and computer vision-based solutions to improve workforce safety. 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. The Business’ Digital App Suite has more than forty applications across themes of automated data reporting, image and video analytics, intelligent root cause analysis, smart simulation, numerical optimisation, advanced AI models, low-code/no-code applications, process digital twins, etc.

The Business also embarked upon a Supply Chain Transformation Project ‘OJAS’, establishing a dedicated supply chain vertical to enhance customer service and realise value from supply chain optimisation. This initiative has led to significant improvements in On-Time-In-Full (OTIF), reductions in Order to Delivery Time (ODLT), and other customer service delivery metrics.

The Business has adopted the principles of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Lean and Six Sigma for over a decade and continues to reap substantial benefits through several Business Excellence initiatives.

Agri Business

ITC continues to drive agricultural transformation at scale through ITCMAARS (Metamarket for Advanced Agriculture and Rural Services), a pioneering ‘Phygital’ platform that integrates digital capabilities with on-ground engagement. ITCMAARS is a crop-agnostic full-stack AgriTech platform, that has been steadily enhancing procurement efficiency, optimising supply chains, and creating new avenues for value generation while delivering meaningful benefits to the farming community. Using Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) for physical engagement and a super app for digital services, ITCMAARS is catalysing farmer impact at scale.

The ITCMAARS super app, which farmers can download on their phones, acts as a single point resource for farmers, providing personalised agricultural services through a plug and play model. This digital platform provides AI/ML driven personalised climate-smart crop advisories, intelligent nudges, customised soil nutrition, vernacular and voice enabled Generative AI, satellite sensing and real-time image recognition tools for the farming community.

The physical layer enables access to cutting edge agricultural techniques such as biological agri inputs, nano fertilizers, drones, precision farming technologies, scientific quality assaying, market linkages and seamless access to formal credit at villages through FPOs and partners.

This initiative now spans across more than 2,050 FPOs encompassing over 2.1 million connected farmers across 11 states. Operating across more than 10 crop value chains, the platform partners with over 100 leading institutions, including banks, agri-input companies, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), and agri-tech startups. The ITCMAARS super app, available in 8 regional languages, has emerged as India’s highest-rated agriTech app. The ‘KrishiMitra’ voice assistant, the world’s first Gen AI-based chatbot for farmers, has significantly boosted digital adoption through vernacular and voice-based interactions.