Chaitali Chakravarty

NEW DELHI 31 AUGUST

ITC is setting up a food research centre at Gurgaon which will currently function as an `experimental kitchen’. Sources said this centre in due course of time will be converted into a full-fledged food technology and research centre.

All will, however, depend on how the markets respond to ITC’s gourmet food business whose first product, Dal Bukhara, was rolled out in the retail market early this week under the umbrella brand, Kitchens of India.

The experimental kitchen, as ITC sources would like to call it, will work on heritage Indian recipes which in turn will be outsourced from different food experts. The master chefs from ITC Welcomgroup will give a special touch by adding treasured formula masalas and flavours. Other premium gourmet dishes in the pipeline are Dal Dakshin, Chettinad Chicken and Kundan Kalia. The chefs are also working on vegetarian kurmas which will be launched in the second phase, sources said. Though the company is tight lipped about the investments, sources said that until now the company has put some Rs 4 crore behind the project.

ITC is in no mood to patent the gourmet dishes which will initially promote the three famous ITC Welcomgroup’s cuisines of Bukhara, Dum Pukht and Dakshin. "Filing patent applications would require giving out details of formula masalas and ITC would not like to part with any of them," sources said. ITC has entered the packaged gourmet foods business as a part of a strategic decision to develop new product lines by synergising its core competencies. Earlier this month, I.T.C. sought shareholder’s permission to remove the punctuations to be rechristened ITC. The company thinks it is inappropriate to identify ITC purely with tobacco as it has diversified into hotels, foods, packaging, apparel, greetings card and each is a focused business with a dedicated division. The foods business under Ravi Naware is exploring other categories like atta, biscuits and confectionery.

In the last two years, there has been no spectacular growth in cigarette consumption. In times to come, the company expects growth from other businesses to add to the balance sheet. However, ITC recorded a net profit of Rs.1,000.26 for the fiscal 2000-01 against Rs.792.44 crore the previous year. In the company’s own words the reasons behind the healthy balance sheet are "value addition to products and services, quality upgradation, strengthening of goodwill of company’s trademarks."