CSR's Next Act

The findings reveal meaningful variances between Indian and global firms, small and large companies, and metro versus non-metro regions.

• We follow CSR’s geographic shifts and its expansion into tier 2 cities and industrial clusters, which now absorb 19–22% of district CSR, growing 120% over three years.
• Our analysis of Global vs Indian companies spotlights how company ownership informs CSR strategy and implementation models – 2% of Indian companies, with an annual CSR budget of over ₹50 crore, account for more than 52% of Indian CSR, while global firms punch above their weight in the sub ₹10 crore budget category.
• We also tracked the rise of non-NGO partners who now account for 13.4% of CSR spend via implementation partners, and analysed the implications of this shift for the impact sector.

Today, what began as a mandate has grown into the world’s largest private-sector-driven social investment initiative, one that has matured into a complex, heterogeneous ecosystem shaped by company size, sector, geography, business intent, and the regions where the demand for social development capital is greatest.

The insights in this report are designed to equip stakeholders with the critical information needed to navigate the evolving CSR landscape and decide which of these emerging pathways are most relevant to their development strategy, by demonstrating how others are starting to apply them.

The data analysis for the State of CSR in India report is developed by India Data Insights – A Sattva Initiative. The report methodology analyses data made available by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.  We augment MCA’s comprehensive project-level data with supplementary and proprietary data sets, information from company annual reports, socio-economic indicators, and our own custom segmentations. This robust methodology allows us to dissect CSR trends from multiple angles, revealing crucial patterns in how funding is directed and how expenditure is influenced by factors like budget size.