New Delhi: IndiGo spent Rs 26.68 crore on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) during FY 2018-19 which is far less than the prescribed CSR amount of Rs 49.7 crore.
The unspent CSR amount is Rs 23.08 crore for which the company plans to scale up interventions and budgets in near future and will endeavor to spend the amount on CSR activities in accordance with the statutory requirements.
Citing the reasons for not meeting the CSR budget target, Summi Sharma, Vice President- ifly, IndiGo said, “firstly because we wanted to draw future programmes based on learning from existing projects and secondly, we have a stringent system for monitoring of CSR funds that are being incurred by our CSR partners. As a policy, we do not release tranches unless 90% of our last tranche has been utilised and milestones of our programs achieved.”
“Some of the CSR projects came to an end in the financial year 2018-19, while new projects of the Company started in FY 2018-19. These are our pilot programmes that are being run with a timeframe of two three years”, Sharma said.
The company in the report said it has spent less than 2% due to stringent fund monitoring system of all the CSR funds that are being incurred by the CSR partners.
“IndiGoReach, the CSR arm of IndiGo, will expand those programmes which are replicable, sustainable and has an impact on society. We believe in expanding the programme basis empirical evidences of success, rather than random expansions” she added.
The company worked in 5 focused areas of children & education, women empowerment, environment, heritage and 6E responsibility under its CSR approach which envisages that the company to evolve and execute strategies to support communities in partnership with governments, civil society and relevant stakeholders.
“Presently, as part of our work on Environment, we are working on a biogas program with an aim to offset carbon emissions. In order to prevent rural women from burning wood and kerosene for cooking, we installed biogas units in identified villages of Uttrakhand and Andhra Pradesh. This program was started even before the CSR Act came into being on 1st April 2014”, Sharma further said.
“Basis the learnings from the program, we expanded this project and are presently running over 9500 bio gas units. We would retire more carbon emissions as we keep generating and monitoring the programs”, she added.
