The world was hit with an unprecedented virus – the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus so potent that could initially appear similar to a common cold, but ends up attacking human immunity heavily and rapidly without giving it a chance to recover. The pandemic has claimed the lives of nearly 4 million people across the globe. While the global economy plummeted, the profits of pharma companies grew rapidly during this time, as the people had to rely heavily on medical supply.
Pharma companies are often at tussle with governments over intellectual property rights. Because of this, the pharma companies are accused of being more profit-oriented than humanity oriented. However, there are several pharma companies in India who have been fighting this perception by investing significantly in CSR. Let us look at five such companies.
Divi’s Laboratories Limited
Divi’s Laboratories Limited strongly believes that Industrial Growth must contribute to the upliftment of the society around. To work towards this, the pharma company focuses heavily on the upliftment of communities and villages around the sites of its operations, through various CSR initiatives.
In FY 2019-20, the company spent Rs. 50.67 Crores on its CSR initiatives, which accounted for 3.69 per cent of its average profit. The Corporate Social Responsibility programmes at Divi’s largely focus on an integrated business model with social and environmental priorities in order to create shared value. The company plays an active role in supporting local communities that are aligned to its long term business goals.
Some of the areas of focus of Divi’s CSR include Promoting education, Empowering women, Rural Development, Preventive health care, Safe drinking water, Animal welfare, and improving the standard of living of the community members.
Aurobindo
In FY 2019-20, the Aurobindo Pharma Limited has spent Rs. 48.60 crore during the FY20, which is around 2.6% of the standalone Profit After Tax. In order to give special focus to its CSR initiatives, the company has established Aurobindo Pharma Foundation as an implementing agency of its welfare activities. The focus areas of the company’s CSR initiatives include Promoting Education, Promoting Preventive Health Care, Eradicating Hunger, Poverty & Malnutrition and Preventive Health Care, Making Available Safe Drinking Water, Environment Sustainability, and Ecological Balance & Conservation of Natural Resources, Rural sports and Setting up Old Age Homes etc.
Through its CSR initiatives, the company has been successful in impacting the lives of approximately 6,00,140 individuals. Of these, the Company’s COVID-19 relief activities have benefitted 3,79,000 individuals.
The Aurobindo Pharma Foundation is constructing a new cancer Hospital with a 2,18,474.50 sq. ft. area for MNJ Institute of Oncology and Regional Cancer Centre at Red Hills, Hyderabad. After completion of the construction of this hospital, many poor cancer patients from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, border districts in Karnataka and Maharashtra can avail free cancer treatment. More than 2.5 lakh patients will be benefitted.
Cipla
‘Caring for Life’ has been at the forefront of Cipla’s business philosophy and remains the principal purpose of doing business. This philosophy is seamlessly integrated into Cipla’s people, products and processes.
Established in 1935, Cipla is focused on the responsible and sustainable growth of complex generics and deepening portfolio in home markets of India, South Africa and North America, as well as key regulated and emerging markets. The company, during FY 2019-20 has spent Rs. 36.31 Crore on various community development projects in the area of health, skilling, education and disaster response.
Cipla executes its CSR initiatives through the Cipla Foundation which is a trust, with the main objective of working in the areas of social, economic and environmental issues. The Foundation works across four key CSR focus areas – health, skilling, education and disaster response – in India and South Africa.
Lupin Limited
Indian pharmaceuticals major Lupin Limited has spent Rs 34.2 crores on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes during FY 2019-20. The company executes its CSR initiatives through Lupin Foundation with the vision to see Indian villages not only economically prosperous but as centres of prosperity consciousness integrating leading corporate houses, planners, technologists and development-oriented people having stewardship who are spiritual in Vision, scientific in temper and humanistic in Karma.
The Lupin Foundation aims to create a replicable and ever-evolving model for sustainable rural development with the simple goal of uplifting families. It focuses on building a sustainable model which aims to improve Human Development Indices (HDI) in its chosen geographic area of operations. The foundation is working hard over the last 26 years to create, develop, nurture and execute programs in partnership with the rural communities in which they choose to work with. The foundation has reached out to 2.8 million people, living in 3100 villages spread across 4 states in India. They are passionate about transforming the rural landscape of the country, changing the lives of the communities in which they exist and creating a happier more meaningful tomorrow. It focuses on rural development programs that help to promote and enable Economic Development, Social Development, Natural Resource Management and Infrastructure Development.
Dr Reddys Laboratiries
Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd spent Rs. 27.53 Crores in FY2018-19 on its Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. The company has set up Dr. Reddy’s Foundation (DRF) to undertake its CSR activities.
Driven by its belief in the inherent motivation and capacity of the human being for progress given the appropriate and adequate environment, DRF innovates and tries out novel concepts that are continuously refined and scaled up to cover larger groups of disadvantaged populations. DRF’s interventions span two sectors – Livelihood and Education.
To promote livelihood, DRF works with rural and urban youth, youth with disability and farmers to address the issues of employability, income generation and consequent improvement in quality of life. For the promotion of education, the foundation strives to provide various opportunities for learning to those who have never been to school, or have dropped out of it and also works to improve the quality of education in schools.
