ESG reporting and sustainable development: A study of top 10 Indian companies

Abstract

Companies across the world are now expected to be accountable not just for their profits, but also for how they manage their environmental impact, how they treat their people, and how transparent their governance is. This is what ESG Environmental, Social, and Governance reporting is about. In India, this became a formal regulatory requirement when SEBI introduced the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) framework in May 2021, making it mandatory from FY 2022-23 for the top 1,000 listed companies.

Analyzed the ESG performance of India's ten most valued companies by market capitalization – Infosys, TCS, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI, Bajaj Finance, HUL, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Industries, and LIC – using CRISIL ESG ratings for FY 2024-25. The scores ranged from 76 (Infosys) to 53 (LIC), a gap of 23 points. Among sectors, Digital/IT companies averaged 75.0, Financial Services averaged 65.2, Manufacturing and Telecom averaged 60.5, and the Energy sector stood at 55.0. When the data was examined, the Governance score was the highest of the three pillars for all seven companies pillar-level data was available.

Evaluated that the sector of which a company belongs to is especially how carbon-intensive its business is, that plays a major role in determining its ESG score. IT firms score high partly because of the nature of their business, not just because they manage sustainability better. The Governance pillar emerged as the strongest pillar consistently, which ties directly to India's BRSR framework where governance disclosures are the most standardized and most verifiable. These findings are placed in the context of India's Viksit Bharat 2047 vision and the Panchamrit climate commitments made at COP26.