Y.C. Deveshwar on Infrastructure Building

Hotels, the column notes, always enjoyed a special place in Deveshwar's heart from 1996 onward. Backed by the huge cash flow from ITC's dominant cigarette business, he expanded the hotel portfolio to nearly 100 properties (120 today).

Open credits Deveshwar with making ITC a global exemplar in sustainability — what current chairman Sanjiv Puri calls 'the only company in the world to become carbon positive, water positive and solid waste positive for over a decade'.

The pioneering farmer empowerment drive ITC e-Choupal — which links the company directly with rural farmers using the internet for agricultural and aquacultural procurement — is described as the world's largest rural digital infrastructure and a case study at Harvard Business School.

Deveshwar was among the first global tobacco chiefs to sense the impending decline of the cigarette business, Open notes. As ITC's helmsman he looked beyond shareholder value to overall gain for environment, society and nation. The paper business expansion was originally framed as securing raw material for pulp; Deveshwar saw the potential for rural employment and environmental benefit, and instructed the team to scale plantation targets 10x —.

Deveshwar points out India is grossly under-roomed: only 5 million international arrivals a year against 80 million in France, 58 million in the U.S., 55 million in China. He estimates India needs 50,000 hotel rooms in two to three years and positions ITC Hotels to capture that growth. He also emphasizes environmental design —.

Paper and packaging, Deveshwar notes, are an under-penetrated Indian market — per-capita consumption around 5 kg per year, against nearly 300 kg in the U.S., 200 kg in the U.K. and 45 kg in China. With education and economic growth expected to drive manifold demand, ITC invested significantly in capacity in this business. The growth of branded consumer goods would, in turn, drive packaging demand —.

ITC's agri-business division, Deveshwar tells Wharton, is positioned as a supply chain partner for the foods and tobacco businesses, with the e-Choupal rural network progressively leveraged to widen FMCG distribution. The e-Choupal itself is a celebrated example of rural digital infrastructure — direct internet-mediated farmer linkages for procurement of agricultural and aquacultural products —.

Deveshwar argues sustainability is a strategic asset. Beyond e-Choupal, he cites sourcing pulp from renewable plantations rather than cheaper imports to create tribal and marginal-farmer livelihoods; integrated watershed development covering over 56,000 hectares; animal husbandry services reaching over 450,000 milch animals; supplementary education for over 200,000 rural children; and roughly 30,000 women entrepreneurs created through about 1,...