ITC has won the prestigious Corporate Social Responsibility Award 2004 from The Energy and Resources Institute(TERI) for its celebrated e-Choupal initiative. The Award provides impetus to sustainable development and encourages ongoing social responsibility processes within the corporate sector.

ITC e-Choupal, the single-largest information technology-based intervention by a corporate in rural India, has already received several national and international accolades as a unique transformation model for rural India. ITC has earlier won the inaugural `World Business Award' instituted in support of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals and also the Wharton-Infosys 'Enterprise Business Transformation Award 2004' for the Asia-Pacific region. The curriculum of the Harvard Business School now includes a case study on the ITC e-Choupal movement and how it is enabling a paradigm shift in Indian agriculture.

ITC is also one of the first Indian companies to pioneer the concept of 'Triple Bottom Line' reporting, covering not only the economic dimension, but also the environmental and social dimensions as well. ITC's Sustainability Report is the only one in India certified to be fully in accordance with GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) Guidelines.

ITC e-Choupal empowers over 3.1 million farmers by enabling them to readily access crop-specific, customised and comprehensive information in their native village habitat and language. Vernacular websites relating to each agricultural crop that ITC deals in, created by the Company, provide ready and real-time information to even marginal farmers on the prevailing Indian and international prices and price trends for their crop, expert knowledge on best farming practices, and micro-level weather forecast. This significantly improves the farmer's decision-making ability, thereby helping him better align his agricultural produce to market demand, secure better quality, productivity and improved price discovery. The e-Choupal model and movement helps aggregate demand by creating a virtual producers' co-operative, thus facilitating access to higher quality farm inputs at lower costs for the farmer. ITC e-Choupal also creates a two-way direct marketing channel for rural India, eliminating wasteful intermediation and multiple handling, thus significantly reducing transaction costs and improving logistical efficiency. Over the next decade, the ITC e-Choupal network aims to cover over 100,000 Indian villages, representing 1/6th of rural India, and create more than 10 million e-farmers.

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