ITC Chairman & MD Sanjiv Puri India optimistic about a quick recovery of omicron Wave Inc., although the hotel chain group has seen a significant drop in business.
He told Toi that inflation is a concern, although the macro to look good and identifying investment increase farmers’ income and the climate crisis as another challenge.
While he is talking about expanding portfolio of Savlon to nasal sprays, Puri said the ITC will explore bidding to run the Hotel Ashok as and when it is plus for sale.
Excerpts: What is the impact of the third wave in terms of your business and the overall recovery process? With each wave, we are better prepared to manage and deal with it.
The impact of the first wave of very severe and not as much the second wave and the third wave, also due to the fact that the moderate impact from the perspective of health and hospitalization, less.
Thus, the limit is much less than before, so, the impact is lower.
Is the current wave makes choppier economic recovery? Expectations are that this wave will pass quickly.
I hope this will not be seriously affected.
The real challenge that we must deal with is how do we create more livelihood? How do we increase the level of farmers’ income? Because that’s roughly half the employment and income of farmers who come also spur consumption-investment-work kind of virtuous cycle.
The third area that needs to be addressed is the climate crisis.
Instead it suddenly became real, India is one of the worst affected.
And, in particular, agricultural economics at the most beaten.
As far as the macro for investment, they were never as good.
Whether it’s liquidity, corporate balance sheet, the income, corporate income tax – all this is very advantageous.
We also saw some kind of commodity super-cycle.
Focus on capital investment is a good strategy to start the economy – jobs created, increased consumption, and then increased capacity utilization when investment should occur for all other macro support.
Encouragement of good capital expenditure, boost agricultural and rural economy is important.
Reduction type what you see in your hotel since Omicron? Last week, probably between 50-60% from last quarter.
This is a big drop.
What major challenges do you see from a business perspective, in 2022? Sustainability and the digital economy are some of the main drivers of the future.
These are some areas because there will be disruptions and challenges that arise due to this field.
And another one is inflation.
This is of course a concern because while we are wise enough in the past the price, we try and handle as much as possible through internal efficiencies and sundry.
But the impact will be very large so that everyone has to deal with the size of the package or repricing and that (inflation) does impact consumption.
Part of it is temporary, but some may not.
It is a worry for the consumer business.
You have extended the portfolio of Savlon, what plans for the future and what the overall share of FMCG in the portfolio? Approximately 27% of the income of the ITC.
After acquiring Savlon, we have added a number of products such as masks, cleansers, sanitiser with hand washing.
We are currently testing a nasal spray to prevent infection Covid-19.