ASSIGNMENT ON CORPORATE SOCIAL

RESPONSIBILITY ACTIVITIES OF ITC

SUBMITTED BY: ASHISH MONICA

SUBMITTED TO: Prof: JOSEPH

DEVADASAN
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY:
Different companies have different definitions for CSR, but studying all the definitions I have come up
with a meaning for CSR “ CSR activity is how the company tries to create a positive impact on the
environment , either to compensate the damage that they have created to the environment or just behave
ethically to develop the environment in all the ways possible.”

My chosen company to present CSR activities would be ITC Ltd.

INTRODUCTION TO THE COMPANY:

ITC is a multi-business company, it does it work in cigar& tobacco, hotels, IT, Packaging, Paperboards &
Specialty Papers, Agri-business, Foods, Lifestyle Retailing, Education & Stationery. It has its registered
office in Kolkata.

Unlike other companies ITC shows a great interest and importance to the CSR activities and has its agenda to
develop and bring a status to the rural farmers by strengthening the rural economy. In order to achieve this they have
been conducting many CSR activities.

There are many activities that ITC does as CSR activities. Some of them are,

Farmer Community development programs & rural development initiatives

 Primary education for the rural poor to enhance employability.
 Managing risks through technology.
 A digital transformation.
 Women empowerment.
 Plantation
 Watershed development
 Livestock development
But among all there I am going to deal with first 5 points.

FARMER COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT:

ITC’s provides answers to many problems through the e-Choupal initiative; the single-largest information
technology-based intervention by a corporate company in rural India. ITC transforms the Indian farmers into a
progressive knowledge-seeking netizens. Enriching the farmers with knowledge; elevating them to a new order of
empowerment.

These programs are introduced by ITC to develop the community, especially the farmer community in the
villages. They have an amazing program called as e-choupal, through ITC provides the farmers with
information regarding know-how and services, timely and relevant weather information, transparent price
discovery and access to wider markets, e-choupal has helped the rural economy. This has 6500 centers and connects
40,000 villages.ITC provides the farmers with updated information to improve the farmers regarding their decision
making ability which helps to produce according to the market demand; this program also secures the quality,
productivity and to discover the improved price. The e-choupal program facilitates the direct marketing by removing
the unnecessary intermediation by the mediators in business and thereby it reduces the costs.
The ITC helps the farmers in a great way, for example the farmers grow wheat all over India at various climatic
conditions, and each different area’s grains are of different grades. And they meet the diverse tastes and preferences
of the people all over India. Though the farmers work so hard in producing the grains of different grades they are
mostly not given the credit to their works as all the grains are taken as average grade in the Mandis(Rural
markets).ITC helps the farmers by providing the best prices for the quality they produced in the village itself. They
also provide the farmers with proper documents regarding the quantity which they produce and the quality and the
payment is done instantly. It also helps the farmers to overcome the risks, for example the aqua farmers are facing a
problem with the contaminated, which affects their business. ITC helps the farmers to come out of their haunting
nightmares by providing them with information regarding , hygienic washing, sanitized dressing and air-tight
packing. All these factors help to neutralize the risks involved in aqua farming. Making it economically much more
attractive, benefiting hundreds of aqua farmers. Even the farmers who are illiterate and whose villages have no
proper electricity supply and no telephone lines , and have never seen computers and have completely no knowledge
about computers are able to conduct e-business with the help of e-Choupal .

PRIMARY EDUCATION:
ITC helps the children in rural areas who had discontinued their studies because various situations either financial or
social to continue their studies through evening coaching classes. ITC assists 577 schools and has covered 228872
students and 2380 supplementary centers. It finances the NGO’s to organize the teacher training program to raise the
standard of the teachers in the government primary schools. It also helps the children by organizing summer camps
sports and all other extra-curricular activities to develop the children in all areas through the NGO’s.

WOMEN EMPOWERMENT:
To encourage the women in the society ITC has come up with various activities. Through these activities ITC helps
the women to organize themselves in Self help groups where they contribute money and save the money to meet
there expenses and women also borrow money from their self help groups which serves as fund to start income
generation projects. There are also few small business started as activities by ITC to help the women , as pickle
making, dry fish, agarbattis, tailoring ,etc.

The ITC Ltd, division of food has introduced a biscuit to offer high quality of glucose.

The company introduced this to continue to intensify their foot print in the social sector by entering with
expansion into new districts of many states. The company’s focus is on mainly three areas:

 Natural resource management.

 Sustainable livelihoods.
 Community development with focus on primary education, health and sanity.
ITC has an income of Rs.8000 cr. And they spend 16.0% on the CSR activities.

PLANTATION:
ITC has launched a program called plantation program, it has done its activity in nearly 100,000 hectares
and has generated employment of 48.38million person days (a unit of measurement usually used in
accountancy to calculate the average no. of hours worked by a person in a day.) It helps the farmers who have
usually huge uncultivated land to cultivate and earn income.
BENEFITS TO THE COMPANY:
The cost which ITC spent on these CSR activities is high and they also get many benefits through these activities
like,

1. ITC achieves an identity in the society as a company which has concern for the people.
2. It also gets publicity for its company indirectly.
3. Generally for example a product of ITC classmate books mention a saying “For every book you purchase
ITC contributes 1rupee to the rural education program” seeing this many students prefer to purchase the
classmate note books as the feel they are doing for a good cause. As a result not only the rural education
gets benefited but also the company earns a lot.
4. The company gets satisfaction as they properly do their duty what they as a company should do to the
society.
5. At last I feel that the company earns many awards such as ITC earned its latest award United Nations
Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) Award at the international conference on Sharing
Innovative Agribusiness Solutions 2008at Cairo for ITC's exemplary initiatives in agri-business through
the e-Choupal.