India is the fastest developing country. India Inc. play a major role in the economic as well as social development of the country. With advent of new challenges and opportunities, the development landscape in the country has evolved.
Ever since Corporate Social Responsibility became mandatory in India, the corporates in the country have time and again stepped up to participate in the development process at whatever capacity required. Considering the changing landscape of the development sector, let us look at the top five trends we can expect to see in CSR in 2025.
Climate Action and Sustainability
India has committed to achieve net zero emissions by 2070. To meet this deadline, the country is gearing up with various initiatives to encourage energy transition. To aid the country in this endeavour, it is expected that corporates will intensify their climate action efforts and adopt sustainability in their operations along with enabling the same for the communities thriving around their operations.
This is expected to translate into increased investment in renewable energy projected including wind, solar, and hydrogen. In addition, more companies are expected to embrace circular economy principles to make their waste management practices more effective. In the past few years, several major companies have been called out on for not ensuring that their supply chain is clean, ethical and sustainable. Therefore, in 2025, it is expected that the companies will pay more attention in cleaning up its supply chain and ensuring that it is sustainable.
Technology heavy initiatives
As the world learns about the power of artificial intelligence and its advantages, it has become evident that denying the use of this new technology is not going to be feasible. Thus, in 2025, it is expected that companies will deploy the new technologies at various levels in its operations as well as in the execution of their CSR initiatives.
Furthermore, benefits of blockchain technology in the matters of transparency is unmatched. Therefore, it is expected that the companies will make use of it for monitoring and ethical reporting of its CSR projects.
Skilling and Education
With new technologies, a need for people trained for using it effectively arises. Considering the fact that these technologies are fairly new, the companies are expected to invest their CSR funds heavily in training and educating the employment seekers and students in these skills. This will not only be essential to fill the skill gap, but will allow them access to a skilled talent pool. In addition, it will also fulfil India’s target of skilling 400 million people by 2030.
Employee Volunteering
The millennials and Gen Z are very sensitive to the social issues surrounding them. They are the problem solvers and action takers, who like to be involved in contributing to a cause in more way than just financial contribution. Considering the fact that more than 60 per cent of India’s workforce will comprise of these people in 2025, it is expected that companies will ramp up their CSR projects with heavy involvement of its employees. Therefore employee volunteering will be a major feature of ever corporate’s CSR strategy.
Collaborative Projects
Indian companies have been improving their CSR projects consistently over the last decade, ever since it became mandatory in the country. They have learned that working singularly is not as effective as working in collaboration with another entity. Which is why, collaborative CSR has been on the rise with increased corporate partnering with the government, NGOs or other companies. In 2025, it is expected that such collaborative partnerships will increase for effective execution and improved scale of a CSR initiative.
