FOCUSSING ON FINANCIAL INCLUSION - Tata, Nilekani & Kelkar to Target Bottom of Pyramid

Mumbai: Our Bureau





Float tech-savvy Avanti Finance to offer tiny loans to poor

Tata Trusts Chairman Ratan Tata, former finance secretary Vijay Kelkar and Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani are teaming up to start a technology-enabled financial inclusion vehicle, Avanti Finance, which will provide tiny loans to poor ignored by other lenders.The aim is to knit together several related threads:
The social sector presence of Tata Trusts and other like-minded partners
The JAM trinity comprising the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, the Aadhaar system and mobile phones
The Unified Payment Interface, or UPI, that's just debuted
Upcoming payments bank ecosystem Since stepping down as chairman of Tata Sons, Ratan Tata has invested in more than 25 firms. Ratan Tata has invested in several firms, including unicorns such as Ola, Paytm and Snapdeal. He has also set up a venture fund -RNT Capital Advisers.
“Avanti will be a platform to impact the poor through credit at individual and community levels to create an improvement in their livelihoods and standard of living, ushering prosperity,“ Tata said.
Infosys cofounder Nilekani, who led the team that established the Aadhaar unique identity system, recently invested in Mumbai-based Sedemac Mechatronics as well as Bengaluru-based 10i Commerce Services.
Avanti's promoters believe institutional inequalities and information asymmetries are depriving the poor of access to affordable credit, they said in a release.In the past few years, the poor have had low delinquency rates compared with any other segment but are charged the highest interest.
Financial inclusion is a key thrust area for the government and the Reserve Bank of India aimed at opening up access to financial services for vast sections of the population.
To this end, they have initiated several programmes, including the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana and payments banks, which are in the process of being set up. India also has an ecosystem of microfinance institutions that offer tiny loans to the poor, although their presence is not uniform across the country.
The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana has so far covered over 99.7% households and offers formal banking services to them. Nearly 24 crore accounts have been opened by banks in the past one-and-ahalf years which now have a deposit base of over `. 41,789 crore.
Both Tata and Nilekani will invest from their philanthropic capital and any gains will be reinvested in such causes. Avanti will apply for registration to the Reserve Bank of India soon and will start operations before March 2017.
“My participation in Avanti is more driven by social motivation rather than anything else -with a view to serve the underserved and unserved and make the Tata Trusts and other like-minded partners' philanthropy more effective,“ Nilekani said. “Technology is an important differentiator and allows us to make a difference in many ways than one.“
“It is a very important step because the Indian mass still does not have access to financial institutions,“ said Sreedhar Prasad, partner, ecommerce and startups, KPMG India.
“Small finance banks take time to set up, is very large in India. Any lending product for masses is a huge opportunity. Seamless operationalisation and collection would be key, since demand will not be a problem,“ he adds.

Source: Economic Times, 30-08-2016

Capgemini enters list of top 5 IT employers in India

Ranjani Ayyar & Shilpa Phadnis

TNN





French multinational con sulting firm Capgemini has entered the big league of IT employers at No. 5, shaking up the pecking order of the largest IT-BPM employers for 2015-16 released by industry lobby Nasscom. Capgemini has displaced HCL Technologies in the top 5.Srinivas Kandula, CEO, Capgemini India, said, “India is today the delivery backbone of the group and will continue to play a significant role going forward. We have consolidated our training facilities in Pune and Mumbai and training and development will be a key focus on the people front in India going forward.“
TCS remained the largest employer for 2015-16 while the Teaneck, New-Jersey headqu artered Cognizant moved down to number three, making way for Sikka led Infosys, that stood second. Wipro remained the fourth largest employer, same as last year. The list also saw new entrants in Mumbaibased Intelenet Global Services that came in the 9th position while Canadian IT giant CGI sneaked into the top 20 list as the 20th largest employer.
These rankings come at a time when IT behemoths are reporting lacklustre numbers for the April-June quarter. Wipro announced a staid revenue growth with a 0-1% growth forecast for the next quarter. Infosys lowered guidance and TCS remained circumspect about the markets.

Source: Times of India, 26-07-2016

PM’s call for building toilets draws mild response from corporate sector 

Contrary to expectations, India’s corporate sector is not too excited about the Prime Minister’s call for utilising Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds to build toilets in government schools, official data suggests. Two months since the appeal was made, companies have collectively signed up to build only 16,009 toilets. This is against the requirement of 2,44,934 government schools that are functioning without toilets.

Data collected by the Union Human Resource Development ministry indicates that 35 corporates and public sector undertakings (PSUs) have pledged support for building toilets in schools as part of the Clean School Campaign. In his Independence Day speech, Narendra Modi set August 15, 2015, as the deadline for providing toilets in all government schools across the country.

He also asked corporates to use their CSR funds for the purpose. As per latest data, PSUs and corporates have pledged to pick up the tabs for building 43,509 toilets. Of these, corporates account for only 16,009 toilets.

Of the 2,44,934 government schools across the country which did not have toilets at the time Modi set the deadline, 1,01,768 schools did not have separate toilets for girls. A majority of the schools without toilets are located in five States: West Bengal, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh.

Among the PSUs which have signed up are the Airports Authority of India, the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, National Aluminium Company Limited, and National Hydroelectric Power Corporation.

- See more at: http://digitallearning.eletsonline.com/2014/10/pms-call-for-building-toilets-draws-mild-response-from-corporate-sector/#sthash.uG0cqs44.dpuf

Jul 21 2014 : Mirror (Mumbai)

Jumping right to it!

MUDAR PATHERYA





ALAPSED SPORTS WRITER WHO'S FOUND FAITH IN INDIA'S CORPORATE PHILANTHROPY Century Plyboard has an interesting CSR model. It doesn't just give an NGO a cheque, but helps it with planning and a process-driven management outlook

The general CSR approach in India is for someone in the senior management to sign CSR cheques and employee teams to address community issues.At the Kolkata-based Century Plyboards, arguably the country's largest plywood manufacturer, the reverse is true. The chairman of the company, Sajjan Bhajanka, has largely divested the cheque-signing function to executives so that he can drive the CSR function virtually single-handedly. He holds posts in six public welfare organizations, investing no less than 120 days annually to public philanthropy, which is equivalent to the time he spends in businesses that generate no less than Rs 200 crore in annual cash profits.
One of the organisations with which Bhajanka is actively associated is Friends of Tribal Society -funding, navigating and implementing strategy with the express objective to address the cause of tribal education, a space largely overlooked by planners and NGOs. The cause is in the numbers: about 8 crore tribals in 100,000 villages (North East India, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan) suffer a literacy rate of only 12 per cent against the national average of 65 per cent.
FTS is unique for some good reasons. One, FTS has extended to the rural; almost 99 per cent of its schools are 75-100 km from the nearest rural centre and therefore usually unconnected to a motorable road; the locations suffer deep subsistence issues with per capita income not more than Rs 15 per day (I almost refuse to believe it) and where the living standards are much like people have lived for the last few hundred years, no difference.
Bhajanka could have been the usual chequewriting type; on the contrary, he is someone who selected to tour remote rural India to introduce himself to nitty-gritty before he wrote that first big cheque. The result became a multi-decadal engagement during which Bhajanka has visited dozens of tribal homes to be able to report firsthand the guilt on his temperature-controlled existence and the stark tribal reality the locals being so poor that women in the family need to share clothes in turns if someone like him dropped in; people who would think they had a good day if they managed one square meal; his own experience of breaking bread (no bread really) over a husked wheat meal that he found challenging to masticate.
Bhajanka could have disengaged and moved to the next CSR preoccupation; he stuck on with the subject of free tribal education because of the vastness of problem at one end and smallness of the collective national initiative at the other; because a contribution by his company (among others) could improve the life of thousands; because he was convinced that the effort required to make this change was not significant (low hanging fruit); because FTS had finally cracked a model that was practical, economical and scalable, needing only companies like Century to back it; because FTS' intervention extended from education to healthcare services and agricultural training.
What makes the FTS model effective is its `one teacher school' concept; the teacher needs to be a local resident; the school is run under trees or a room provided by villagers; the education covers three years following which the student is mainstreamed into a government school; its assetlight educational approach costs no more than Rs 20,000 per school per year (lower than the monthly salary of an urban teacher); its multitiered operational architecture makes it possible for responsibility and authority to be delegated downwards so that the organizational apex can then focus on quicker school rollout.
The result: what started off as a pilot project has grown to 46,966 villages and more than 51,000 schools educating 13,35,078 tribal children (December 2012) across 25 states. FTS teaches 15,00,000 children at any moment, has graduated 25,00,000 students in its existence and takes in no less than 600,000 students each year. One would have relaxed after having set this furious pace; instead, FTS intends to establish 100,000 Ekal Vidyalayas throughout the country's tribal belt by 2014-15.
Century's association represents an interesting CSR model whereby the company has selected not to reinvent any wheel, prefers working with existing NGOs or institutions, would rather get in on the planning, bring its process-driven management outlook to the NGO's table and leverage the value of its association across similar wellwishers to mobilise funds.
The validation of this strategy lies in the numbers: Century puts down Rs 1.5 cr annually in helping FTS launch 1,000 schools annually on its own account (among other expenditures). An equivalent but standalone spending by Century could at best have helped build one school in urban India; by selecting to associate with an ongoing movement, the hydraulic impact has translated into what is possibly the largest educational movement anywhere in the world. Likedhated his column! write to Mudar Patherya at mirrorfeedback@timesgroup.com

Jul 16 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)

Tata Group Spent Rs 8k Cr on CSR in 10 Years

MUMBAI OUR BUREAU





The group's brand custodian says avg spend in last 3 years . 1,000 cr is about `

The Tata Group, which has been restructuring and realigning its philanthropic and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities to address emerging societal challenges and also conform with the new regulatory requirements on Tuesday revealed that it has spent . 8,000 crore on CSR acin excess of ` tivities over the last decade between a medley of Tata trusts and group companies.Mukund Rajan, brand custodian and chief ethics officer of the Group, who also oversees the sustainability function, told media persons at a roundtable in Mumbai that the average spend on CSR in the last three years has been around ` . 1,000 crore a year in a ratio of 60:40 between the companies and trusts. The specific figure for Tata companies in 2013-14 stands . 660 crore.
at ` Even before the present set of mandatory CSR norms came into force, the group had been channeling a sizeable chunk of its profits back into the community as its business model had been designed for the purpose; 66% of the equity of Tata Sons, the holding company is held by philanthropic trusts.
Sustainability and giving back to society has been integral to the business philosophy of the group.
Only now it's beginning to address CSR in a more strategic and focused manner across the group; the Tata Council for Community Initiatives (TCCI), for instance, has been disbanded and a new Tata Sustainability Group (TSG) has been created at Tata Sons under the tutelage of Shankar Venkateswaran, formerly with PricewaterhouseCoopers. The TSG will draw guidance from a new Global Sustainability Council chaired by Ra jan and CEOs of major group companies as members.
As part of the group's strategy, efforts are on to put together a panIndia group-wide programme on skills building, the need of the hour for a country battling human capital challenges. This is expected to be a multi-stakeholder initiative with even the government playing its role. The traditional programmes of the group companies -on education, health and nutrition, livelihoods, biodiversity -continue.
TSG head Venkateswaran announced that the group will work across three major prongs -community development, environment, and disaster response.
Having tested the waters on employee volunteering recently, which touched 25,000 volunteers, in 150 companies, across 60 countries and 540 locations, the group has decided to integrate volunteering as major component in its overall strategy for the future. A 6-12month sabbatical for employees to go out and engage with NGOs and institutions is also on the cards.

Jun 26 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Slum redevelopment a CSR activity

Lubna Kably

Mumbai: TNN





Road Safety Awareness, Consumer Protection Services Also Eligible: Govt

Slum-redevelopment, road safety awareness and consumer protection services will be treated as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities, according to clarifications issued by the ministry of corporate affairs in response to queries from stakeholders.BJP's election manifesto had promised to usher in a low-cost housing policy that would ensure every family in India a home by 2022. The ministry , in a circular, has clarified that slum-redevelopment or housing for economically weaker sections could be covered under the eligible CSR category of `measures taken for reducing inequalities faced by socially and economically backward groups'.
Activities relating to road safety promotion, which is a dire need in India, are also likely to get a major fillip as the ministry has clarified these would also be treated as eligible CSR activities. Promoting road safety awareness through print, audio and visual media would qualify as a CSR activity under the broad head of `promoting education'; providing trainers to drivers would fall under `promoting vocational skills'; and social projects like giving medical and legal aid, treatment to road accident victims would fall under the eligible category of `promoting health care', explains the circular.
Any project meant for development of rural India will be treated as a `rural development' project and will be an eligible CSR activity . Likewise, supplementing government schemes like mid-day meals would also qualify as CSR for alleviation of poverty and malnutrition. Renewable energy projects would be eligible for promoting `environmental sustainability'.
Responding to a query from the Consumer Education and Research Centre, the ministry has clarified that consumer education and awareness related activities would also be eligible as CSR towards `promoting education'. Likewise, donations to IIM (A) for renovation of classrooms would be an eligible CSR activity to promote education. While the ministry has provided various illustrative clarifications, it has also stressed that the 10 categories of eligible activities outlined in Schedule VII of the Companies Act, 2014 `must be interpreted liberally'. Activities outlined in this schedule are wide ranging and include those relating to promoting education, promoting preventive healthcare, rural development and even protection of national heritage, art and culture.
Salaries paid by companies to regular CSR staff and volunteers can also be factored into the project cost as part of the CSR expenditure. However, one-off events undertaken by India Inc, such as sponsoring marathons, awards, sponsorship of TV programmes, will not qualify as eligible CSR activities. Expenses incurred by India Inc for fulfilment of any regulations such as Labour Laws and Land Acquisition Act also would not count as CSR expenditure, adds the circular.
Even sustainable urban development and urban public transport system are not eligible CSR activities.
Experts point out that India Inc should proceed with caution. “The final rules to the Companies Act are clear that CSR activities do not include normal business activities. Thus, even if slum redevelopment qualifies as a CSR activity , a grey area would crop up, if a slum area is taken up for construction of villas and these slum dwellers are rehabilitated by the builder.“
The CSR provisions contained in The Companies Act, 2014, requiring large companies meeting certain financial criteria to either comply with the CSR spend or report non-compliance kicked in from April 1. These companies are required to spend 2% of their average net profit of the last three years on CSR activities. Fillip to trusts, societies xpenditure incurred by a foreign holding company for CSR E activities in India, if routed through its Indian subsidiary, will qualify as CSR spend of the Indian subsidiary. In addition, while the Rules to the Companies Act, 2014 had permitted India Inc to carry out CSR activities through a trust, registered society or non profit company, the circular goes a step ahead. Contribution by India Inc towards the corpus of such a trust, society or towards the capital of the not-for-profit company will also qualify as CSR spend. The conditions prescribed are that these entities should be created exclusively for carrying out CSR activities or the corpus should be created exclusively for carrying out eligible CSR activities.