V Phani Kumar

Mumbai, 5 June

ITC has forged a strategic tie-up with Maple Leaf, a domestic pop-up greeting card manufacturer, to strengthen its presence in the business.

The company has also decided to make a foray into distribution of greeting cards in regional 2 languages to penetrate into untapped rural markets.

The Calcutta-based diversified company, which set up its greeting cards business in Chennai just over an year ago, currently only has a 5 per cent share in the Rs 250 crore domestic market.

However, drawing from the distribution strength of its cigarette business, the greeting cards division has access to a strong distribution reach spanning 700 markets and 10,000 retail outlets across India.

The greeting cards business also gains from ITC’s presence in the paper manufacturing.

Chand Das, chief executive, ITC Greeting Cards Business, said, "So far, we didn’t have presence in the pop-up cards segment. And maple Leaf is primarily present in the western region only.

With this tie-up, Maple Leaf will be our exclusive supplier for pop-up cards, which will be sold under our brand name, Expressions."

"We are also planning to get into distribution of greeting cards in vernacular languages in about three months. We are hoping to more than double our market share in this segment this year," he added.

Currently, the domestic market for greeting cards alone is relatively small, as only a small percentage of people, mostly in the urban regions, buy greeting cards.

Although the domestic market has been growing at a compound annual rate of around 15 per cent over the past 10 years, the size of the market is small.