NEW DELHI: Prashant Kumar Hota, presently leading Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) function of Indian Business Conglomerate Jindal Steel & Power Ltd (JSPL), has been honoured as one of the 25 most impactful CSR Leader – 2019 in India.
He received the award from Rahul Roy, Renowned Actor & Producer; Martin Neureiter, President & CEO, CSR Company, Austria and Rusen Kumar, Founder, India CSR Network at Giving Back India CSR Leadership Summit & Awards organized by India CSR Network on April 1, 2019 at New Delhi.
Hota is a leading development professional and has worked extensively in public sector organisations before stepping into the field of CSR in private sector. Currently, he works as Executive Vice-President and Group Head of CSR, Education and Sustainability of JSPL Group. He is known for introducing 3600 approach, sustainable strategies as well as public-private collaboration in CSR. Under his leadership, JSPL and its CSR Arm JSPL Foundation has been awarded with several national and international awards for its innovative and sustainable social development programmes.
Some of the innovative and high impact CSR programmes initiated by him at JSPL are Watershed Development at Angul, Odisha Wadi Programme for Tribal development at Tamnar, Chhattisgarh, Kishori Express for anemia control among adolescent girls in Odisha and Haryana, rural micro-entrepreneurship for women self-help enterprise development, Vatsalya for comprehensive mother and child healthcare in rural areas across Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, Telemedicine Centres at various locations and many others.
Thanking India CSR Network for this award, Hota said, “I am thankful to thousands of people who trusted me and supported me for their development. I also thank the Chairman of JSPL, Mr. Naveen Jindal and Co-Chairperson of JSPL Foundation Smt. Shallu Jindal for their support and encouragement to improve quality of life of people around JSPL’s operations across India. I dedicate this award to my team members without whom I would not have been successful”.
With a 22 years stint at apex rural bank of India, NABARD, Hota has worked almost all the states of the country. His credentials include hands on experience in 162 Watershed development Projects across the states of Maharashtra and Odisha, Development of Wadi Project for Tribal Development in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajsthan, UP and Karnataka, PM’s Programme on Farmers’ Distress Control for Cotton Farmers in Vidarbha, Maharashtra and represented NABARD for formulation of concept design for KBK programme by the Prime Minister’s Office. He served long as the Dist. Development Manager of NABARD in both North Goa & South Goa District. He has served as a member of the Govt. of India Study Committee on Investment Promotion Scheme on Non Forest Wasteland and was coordinating the working of the High level Committee on Non forest Wasteland headed by Mohan Dharia.
He started his career in private sector as State Head for CSR and PR, Vedanta Resources, Odisha and led the CSR function for the group at Jharsuguda, Lanjigarh, Puri and Keonjhar in the State. To his credit, he also spearheaded the Calamity Redress Mission of Vedanta at the Group level. In the initial part of his career Mr. Hota was a part of Government of India (Defence Accounts), Odisha Government (Tourism) and the Central Bank of India (Probationary Officer).
Hota is also known as one of the leading think tank on CSR in India. He is a member of Odisha State CSR Council, constituted by Government of Odisha, head of CSR Panel of Confederation of Indian Industries and Convenor of Committee on CSR, Sustainability of Indian Chamber of Commerce and core member of Odisha CSR Forum. He is also a visiting faculty at some of the leading academic institute of India, which includes Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and BIMTECH, New Delhi, College of Agriculture Banking of Reserve Bank of India, Pune and Bankers’ Institute of Rural Development, Lucknow.
He holds an M. Phil in Sustainable Development and MBA. He has been a Scholar of DET, Germany, in Development of Sustainable rural production System and has wide field exposures in India, Thailand and Europe. Recently he has been awarded with PhD (Honoris Causa) by Indian Virtual Academy for Peace & Education. He has also authored a Modern Poetry book named as ‘Kaatha’.
