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A day after the ministry of corporate affairs articulated the rules governing corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group has decided to form a trust to channelise group’s spendings on CSR that would primarily look at creating institutions in academic and medical educations.
“We want to create institutions and do something which is worthwhile instead of fettering it away in small bits. We are in the process of creating a trust which will set up bodies like educational and medical institutions. The idea is to create at least one institution in a period of three years. So, within a time span of a decade we will be able to set up at least three institutions something which we would be proud of,” Sanjiv Goenka, chairman of the group said today.
With this, mandatory spending of a minimum 2% of net profit under the new Companies Act will be effective from April 1. The new rules allow a company to carry out CSR activities through a registered trust or society or a separate corporate body.
“The trust has not yet been formed, and we are looking at things like the corpus that we can start with,” Goenka said at the sidelines of a press conference to announce the launch of Rama Prasad Goenka Scholarship.
The scholarship, launched on the eve of the birthday of Sanjiv Goenka’s father who died last April, would help meritorious students pursue higher education.
The RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group was formed in 2011 following the splitting of Rama Prasad-headed RPG group’s businesses among his two sons – Harsh and Sanjiv.
That year also saw the group’s foray in to the education sector with the setting up of Kolkata campus of Business school International Management Institute.
Goenka is currently the chairman of IMI board that overseas IMI campuses in Delhi, Bhubaneshwar and Kolkata.
The group has a presence in wide-ranging sectors with companies like CESC and Noida Power in energy sector, Spencers’ in retail, Firstsource in IT, Harrison Malayalam in plantation and Philips Carbon Black and Open Media among others. As on end-March 2013, the group has earned a revenue base of Rs 13,644 crore and net profit of about Rs 900 crore.
[DNA, 1st March, 2014]
