KOLKATA: ITC, the Indian tobacco to hotels conglomerate, has plans to become the country's largest FMCG group by 2030, its chairman told the company's annual general meeting.

YC Deveshwar said ITC wants FMCG to achieve revenues of Rs 1 lakh crore by that date and plans to enter new categories like fruit juices, tea, coffee, chocolates and dairy products, the Financial Chronicle reported.

Going into further detail about how this will be done, he said: "We always believe in creating new economic activities and creating new jobs instead of growing through acquisition.

"We are therefore creating the back end first. When it comes to dairy business, we would like to get into animal husbandry first and create forward linkages with dairy business. We are doing exactly that."

ITC is also planning to concentrate on wellness and functional foods, the Times of India reported. It has already entered this market, after launching its Farmlite nutritional biscuit brand in March this year, and its overall food business has achieved turnover of Rs 5,700 crore in 2013-14.

However, while the company sees opportunities with FMCG, it has no plans to disengage from its tobacco business because of the imposition of high taxes, the Economic Times reported.

Deveshwar argued that if ITC was not in the tobacco business, then there would be greater dependency on imported foreign cigarettes and smuggling.

"If nobody is there, then there will be imports and cigarettes will be illegally smuggled into the country," he said. "So we will be there so that the tobacco business is in responsible hands like ITC."

Data sourced from Financial Chronicle, Times of India, Economic Times; additional content by Warc