Redeveloping a local school in Shirwal, Maharashtra

As a diversified business conglomerate, we play multiple roles and acknowledge that stakeholder engagement is crucial to our business. Our key focus is to gain an understanding of the needs and expectations of the various stakeholder groups within and outside the organisation. We have an extensive value chain and we interact with a wide range of stakeholders. Sustainability issues are identified through these interactions, the challenges we face and peer reviews. The issues identified are evaluated for their relevance and their impact on economic, environmental and social aspects.

In order to align our community development programmes to UN’s sustainable development goals, in 2015 we carried out a detailed community needs assessment in our priority plant locations. We invited a third party external agency, Ethica Strategy, to carry out the assessment. The team followed a three-step approach, where they connected with our plant and corporate office, held extensive field based assessments, backed by thorough secondary research to validate key facts and add on additional information available from official sources.

The result is a comprehensive report of our community, their needs and priorities, gaps in the system and our way forward. As a result, we have designed a framework to streamline our activities and implement high impact community development programmes.