Bengaluru used to be the true-blue public sector undertaking (PSU) town of the country until mid-1990s. In the bunch of Navaratna PSUs were Hindustan Aeronautics, Bharat Electronics Ltd., Bharat Earth Movers Ltd., Hindustan Machine Tools and Indian Telephones Industries, which later became ITI.
Interestingly, ITI was independent India’s first public sector undertaking, incorporated in 1948. It played an unmatchable role in ushering in telephony revolution in the country that connected cities to towns and towns to villages through voice, but its fortunes started diminishing with the advent of globalisation/liberalisation and the drastic changes the new policies brought in the marketplace.
After being in the red for almost 15 years, ITI has over the last couple of years managed to wriggle out of debt and losses it piled up. ITI had reported a net profit of ₹168.25 crore for the third quarter ended December 2019 against ₹7.19 crore in the same quarter a year ago. The company’s revenues almost doubled to ₹827.95 crore against ₹419.5 crore, overall posting an outstanding performance.
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The changing fortunes has spurred the PSU to also spruce up its sprawling premises and do up some of the old facilities. “We are now in the process of developing our campus gardens. We are also rebuilding our courts and grounds for various sports and games. We used host the city’s most exciting sport or game event on our campus. Our gardens used to win prizes every year. We want to regain our lost glory, by all means, and after a break of 20 years we have now won first prizes for best ornamental gardens and horticulture gardens,” said Shashi Prakash Gupta, director, HR, ITI.
Old Bengalureans might recall that ITI was a front runner in badminton, cricket, basketball, football, volleyball, hockey, kabbadi, ball badminton, weightlifting and athletics. ITI, along with its PSU peers, has taken an active part in the Lalbagh flower shows too.