- How would you recap your journey at ICICI Lombard?
It has been a little over three years now that I have been employed with ICICI Lombard. I have been a marketer pretty much all through, wearing the marketing hat and being a full-service marketing head. I think one additional feather to my cap here at Lombard has been adding the CSR to the portfolio, which is, again, very close to my heart as well. And, you know, one feels one is able to play a small but vital role in giving back to society. Overall, I think it has been a great journey so far, so good.
- You also said that CSR is very close to your heart and you have been a keen player in this space. So what are the key trends shaping the CSR landscape today?
When you talk about CSR, there has been a growth in the industry. One is from a compliance angle. CSR spend of 2% of your net profits over the previous three preceding years of every corporate is coming from a regulatory compliance perspective. But I think more and more corporates are taking it a lot more seriously. And there has been a growth organically about 12 to 15% in the overall corpus. You are talking about close to Rs 1.6 lakh crore that is going into CSR programmes.
A large part of that is in the four areas of education, livelihood, healthcare and rural development. So about 75% actually is centred and concentrated in these four programmes. The balance is across everything else under the sun ranging from senior citizen care, domestic abuse victims, child abuse victims, vocational training to afforestation and so on and so forth. And I think the other big trend is that with a lot more corporates, especially with the ESG agenda and mandate coming into the boardrooms, CSR is becoming a mainstay agenda item. A lot of the CSR programmes are now looking at corporates becoming responsible citizens and taking steps towards building a sustainable, greener future and world and planet for the generations to come. They are taking the sustainability aspect a lot more seriously and taking small to big measures.
- What are the biggest challenges in implementing impactful CSR initiatives?
Corporates, I think, mean well. But what happens is that there is a gap in the implementation at times. It is because either one is spread too thin or the programme is fragmented in terms of the designated areas. It is so fragmented that it does not build scale and long-term impact.
It doesn’t really shift the needle on bringing the change through impacting lives where you can see a tangible difference. That can only happen when you are invested into it for a long-term and you move the entire machinery around it, and you choose programmes which are synergistic with your competencies, capabilities, business and stakeholders so that you are able to leverage a lot more given your corporate and business standing and build long-term impact and higher visibility and bring about real change.
What tends to happen more often than not is that it is a compliance tick box and therefore one is taking on, you know, certain CSR programmes which are just about meeting the compliance needs but it is not coming with an entire emphasis on long-term sustainable impact in a particular location in a particular programme where you continue to invest year and year.
Compounding effect only comes when you are able to invest in a certain programme and build scale into it. The other bit is even from metric point of view. It is more about volume and value rather than again looking at metrics where you are building long-term impact and scale. The third is that a lot of the implementation agencies like the NGO partners and there are a lot of them who are doing incredible great work, a lot of times, are not able to implement the strategy that was intended originally.
The other complication is from a geographical standpoint. A lot of the corporates and a lot of the CSR investments are centred in urban areas and in and around places of work where the office is situated or where the industry is situated which tends to be concentrated in the urban and metro sections and thereabouts. It doesn’t really penetrate and percolate down to the real Bharat and to the tier 3 and tier 4 towns and villages where you actually need a lot of the CSR support.
- Would you have any policy recommendations to overcome such challenges?
Well, from the CSR regulation is exhaustive in nature but I think if one were to, from a policy standpoint, build in impact measures and metrics and bring in a lot more accountability and transparency into that where the onus and ownership is on corporates to demonstrate long-term sustainable impact, it would help.
Also, I think depending sectorally from a policy standpoint, while the entire universe is large, if there were policy suggestions and recommendations which nudge certain sectors and corporates in certain industries towards complementing in synergistic areas and bring the entire sector and category together, it would bring a lot more impact.
So just to give you an example: In retail or the apparel or the textile industry, if the CSR programmes or the budgets were aligned with the lives and the work of artisans or the tribals and complemented with a lot more support from intermediaries and audiences and communities, they would benefit a lot more from large-scale impact. So it is still synergistic with your business and you are still able to create sustainable long-term impact with scale.
- How can companies on their own maximise the impact of their CSR spend?
It starts fundamentally with a few questions that companies need to ask themselves, and be very authentic about it, starting with what is the problem that you are trying to solve? Two, is there an opportunity in that problem for the company to play an active role? Three, is it going to be an investment which is sustainable over long term? Will it be able to create impact over long term? Again, have you added a long-term window and lens to the strategy? And fourth, bring in the right implementing partners and agencies on board but also activate and amplify and leverage the entire ecosystem of stakeholders, whichever corporate or industry or sector that you kind of work with.
- What kind of a role do you see for CSR in our journey towards a developed India?
We are now the fourth largest economy. In the next few years, we are going to be the third largest economy. We are already very close to inching towards the $5 trillion mark. And in the years to come, it could be possibly anywhere between $20-30 trillion. When you talk about this kind of growth and this kind of bullishness from the economy standpoint, it can only sustain when you have the entire populace and the multitudes of the many India’s that make India as a whole uplifted on multiple aspects. CSR has a very integral, crucial role in it.
I think some of the challenges to look at are a long-term horizon and a very sharp lens on long-term sustainable impact with a very clear metric of what is the tangible difference that it will make to individuals or communities’ lives? Corporates that embark on CSR programmes need to be conscious of these factors. There is also need for more coalitions, more collaboratives, and a multitude of stakeholders joining hands and partnering on synergistic programmes. And that is what will shift the needle in terms of long-term sustainable impact for India.
