Board of Directors at the meeting held on July 22 redesignated Sanjiv Puri, whole time director, also as chief operating officer of the company with immediate effect, ITC said on Monday.
Cigarettes-to-hotels major ITC on Monday appointed Sanjiv Puri as its chief operating officer, further fuelling the speculation that Puri will most likely to succeed the outgoing CEO Yogesh Chander Deveshwar.
ITC's current chief executive Deveshwar, who headed the company for two decades, is hanging his boots in February 2017. But post-retirement, he will continue to serve the company in a non-executive role for another three years.
"Board of Directors at the meeting held on July 22 redesignated Sanjiv Puri, whole time director, also as chief operating officer of the company with immediate effect," ITC said on Monday.
While it is not yet known whether Puri, who was elevated to the post of additional executive director in December, and now its COO, would eventually take the role of executive chairman in February, sources said that with internal handholding sessions, Puri is already being groomed as the company's next head, and he, in all likelihood, would fill in Deveshwar's shoes in another seven months.
Puri's eventual ascent to the top post became apparent when in December, the IIT-Kanpur graduate was made the head of all of ITC's fast moving consumer goods businesses that includes cigarettes, toiletries, personal care, snacks and also paper and packaging businesses.
Apart from demonstrating his ability to broker quick acquisition deals - BNatural brand in fruit juice space, Savlon in hygiene and Shower to Shower in personal care space – another key attribute of Puri is that he has handled most of the verticals of ITC at different points of time. He first became divisional chief executive of the tobacco division – ITC's single most important business division still now - in 2009 and additionally handled the charge of the company's marketing and distribution function.
Puri has also led ITC Infotech, a wholly-owned subsidiary of ITC.
That said, it's quite a challenge filling up Deveshwar's shoes, particularly when branded tobacco business would continue to be the target of the government for anti-smoking measures and revenue collection.
ITC's FMCG business continues to falter at the bottomline level while its second biggest business agri-commodities would continue to suffer from vagaries of business cycles.
Amid all this, Deveshwar wants Puri to turn ITC into a home-grown multinational and a domestic FMCG player with a turnover mark of Rs 1,00,000 crore by 2030.
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