Responsible Business Rankings

India’s Top Companies for
Sustainability and CSR 2021

Quality of Reporting

Many companies have started reporting their sustainability actions. We wanted to understand how well the companies were reporting. Do companies reort tangible targets/KPIs, Do they adopt science based targets, do they report performance against targets among others. We gave scores to companies on their quality of reporting and results were quite revealing. Most companies did not score well on this front.


  • Almost 70% of the companies that were studied scored less than 5 in quality of reporting out of 10.
  • The lowest and highest scores were 1 and 9 respectively. None of them got 10.
  • Manufacturing companies score slightly better than Services companies.
  • Private companies scored better than Public companies

Quality of Reporting - No of companies

QOR Score
Manufacturing4.13
Services3.27
Public2.75
Private4.09
  • Information Technology industry had the highest average QOR score. Other Financials had the least.
SectorAverage QOR ScoreStandard deviation
Capital Goods3.231.76
Consumer discretionary3.642.12
Consumer Staples4.392.53
Diversified4.362.37
Energy3.281.76
Financials2.861.74
Healthcare4.062.55
Information Technology6.372.08
Materials4.462.73
Other Financials2.641.49
Other Industrials3.203.11
Telecommunication Services5.331.63
Utilities4.312.18
  • Top 10 companies had an average QOR score of 8 and Top 25 had an average of 7. Companies with ranks 40 or higher have significantly superior quality of reporting.

QOR Score vs Rank

QOR Score vs Rank

Quality of reporting key parameters

Quality of Reporting - components
Director responsible for BR implementation97%
CSR Committee only95%
Impact assessment of CSR activities76%
Business responsibility reporting45%
Disclosure of material business responsibility risks42%
Impact assessment metrics disclosed36%
Tangible targets/KPIs34%
Current performance reporting against targets31%
External assurance of business responsibility reporting30%
Past performance reporting against targets27%
Revisions/Re-affirmations of targets/KPIs20%
Science-based targets/KPIs14%
Frequency of impact assessment of CSR activities13%
Targets/KPIs linked to SDGs7%
Performance data in a readily downloadable format2%
  • Targets/KPIs linked to SDGs: We find that only 13 out of top 100 companies mapped their business/CSR goals with SDGs.
  • Impact assessment metrics: 36 companies disclosed impact assessment data for their CSR projects. These too were not disclosed for all or most projects of the company. Data was shared for only few leading projects. Usually, companies mention the coverage of their CSR initiatives as their impact data.
  • Frequency of impact assessment: Only 18 companies reported measurable frequency with which they conduct impact assessment of their CSR projects. 5 of these were from Materials industry. Some companies stated vaguely that they conduct it from “time-to-time” or “periodically” or “regularly”.
  • Performance data in a readily downloadable format: Only 2 companies, Cisco and ACC Ltd, had their ESG performance data available in a downloadable format (pdf) on their website. Few companies have disclosed ESG data in a tabular format however it is part of Annual Report and not downloadable separately. None had made their performance data available in an excel workbook.
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