Archana Raghuram- Director, Cognizant Outreach, Chinmay Sengupta- COO, ICICI Foundation, Linus Chettiar- Vice President, Group Communication & CSR, Deutsche Bank, Nina Screwalla-Global Head, TCS Maitri and Indranil Choudhury- VP-HR, HDFC Life shared their CSR best practices involving employees & consumers
India CSR News Network
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MUMBAI: GiveIndia, India’s leading philanthropy marketplace hosted a session on ‘Inclusive CSR – Attaining progression in Corporate Giving through employees and consumers’ on Day 1 of the India Non Fiction Festival in Mumbai. The session brought together pioneers of Inclusive CSR in the country like Archana Raghuram: Director, Cognizant Outreach, Chinmay Sengupta: COO, ICICI Foundation, Linus Chettiar: Vice President, Group Communication & CSR, Deutsche Bank, Nina Screwalla: Global Head, TCS Maitri and Indranil Choudhury: VP-HR, HDFC Life to share their organizations’ experiences and best practices.
Archana Raghuram, Director, Cognizant Outreach who set up Outreach in 2007 said, “The best decision Cognizant made while launching Outreach was keeping it purely voluntary and making it a grass root program, allowing employees to decide what they wanted to do. Volunteering is now a culture within the organization with over 45,000 active volunteers.”
Shedding light on how ICICI engages its customers in corporate giving, Chinmay Sengupta, COO, ICICI Foundation said, “During the Joy of Giving Week, our customers could donate through ICICI’s 11,000 ATMs across the country, leading us to raise 17.5 million rupees. Customers were actually thankful to us for providing such a platform”
Linus Chettiar: Vice President, Group Communication & CSR, Deutsche Bank, “At Deutsche Bank, we follow the inverted pyramid approach and have the DB Champions lead the initiative. Last year, we had 2000 volunteers who put in 17,000 manhours to make a difference. We also have the India Volunteering Week, where employees can commit time and effort in their own cities towards a cause”
Nina Screwalla: Global Head, TCS Maitri spoke about the legacy of the Tata group of giving back to society and said that the group gives back almost 50-60% of its profits annually.
Talking about how HDFC Life distinguished itself from its parent company, Indranil Choudhury, VP-HR, HDFC Life said, “HDFC Life focuses on financial literacy and children’s education. We started with small tie ups with BMC schools in 2011 but currently reach out to over 15,000 children for financial literacy.”
The session ended with a panel discussion where each of the speakers shared insight on choosing the right partners for their initiatives, their views on the CSR Mandate and how CSR can fuel the development of India.
GiveIndia is a not-for-profit organization that is dedicated to helping people support a cause of their choice from approximately 150 NGOs. It’s a “philanthropy exchange” that does a thorough due diligence on NGOs of a wide range of causes (viz. children, education, environment, health, human rights, employment, disability, elderly, women, and youth) and lists them on www.GiveIndia.org for the public to choose and donate to. Founded by Venkat Krishnan N in 2000, GiveIndia was launched with a mission to create a culture of giving in India. It has three primary fundraising models – Payroll Giving Program, Online and Retail giving and HNI Giving.
