The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is an organization that produces a comprehensive sustainability reporting framework that is widely used around the world. It started with a vision of a sustainable global economy where organizations manage their economic, environmental, social and governance performance and impacts responsibly and report transparently. GRI has a mission to make sustainability reporting standard practice by providing guidance and support to organizations. It’s about disclosure of organization’s economic, environmental, social and governance performance in credible way and subsequently helping them to identify business risks and opportunities to the organization due to these parameters.
GRI provide framework to report organization’s sustainability performance. It is known as the sustainability reporting framework and consists of three parts – (1) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, (2) Sector Supplements and (2) The Technical Protocol – Applying the Report Content Principles. All it provide guidance on how organizations can disclose their sustainability performance in true manner. Organization of any size and type can use this framework to assess their performance indicators in economic, environmental, and social domain. Organization that creates their non financial report based on GRI sustainability reporting framework can be considered as credible output aligned with applicable standards and norms. Such report can be used to demonstrate organizational commitment to sustainable development. It can also qualitatively and quantitatively used to measure and compare organization performance based on environment, social and economic dimensions.
By September 2011, 43 corporate sustainability reports published by different organizations in India. TATA (Automotive) is pioneer in sustainability reporting in India. It has started reporting their sustainability performance from year 2001 based on GRI protocol. Following table shows the list of Indian companies with GRI based sustainability reports;
| Sr. No | Organization | Sector | Starting Year |
| 1 | Mumbai International Airport Private Limited | Airport operator | 2012 |
| 2 | Ambuja Cements | Construction | 2011 |
| 3 | JSW Steel | Metals Products | 2011 |
| 4 | Jubilant Industries Limited | Chemicals | 2011 |
| 5 | Transport Corporation of India (TCI) | Logistics | 2011 |
| 6 | UltraTech Cement | Construction Materials | 2011 |
| 7 | HCC | Construction | 2010 |
| 8 | Jain Irrigation Systems | Agriculture | 2010 |
| 9 | JSW | Conglomerates | 2010 |
| 10 | KOEL | Energy | 2010 |
| 11 | Maruti-Suzuki | Automotive | 2010 |
| 12 | Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX) | Financial Services | 2010 |
| 13 | Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) | Energy | 2010 |
| 14 | Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) | Financial Services | 2010 |
| 15 | Sree Santhosh Garments (SSG) | Textiles and Apparel | 2010 |
| 16 | Grasim Industries | Construction Materials | 2009 |
| 17 | Moser Baer India | Other | 2009 |
| 18 | V. S. Dempo & Co. | Mining | 2009 |
| 19 | Wipro Ltd | Computers | 2009 |
| 20 | ABN AMRO INDIA | Financial Services | 2008 |
| 21 | BPCL | Energy | 2008 |
| 22 | Chemplast Sanmar | Chemicals | 2008 |
| 23 | Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories India | Healthcare Products | 2008 |
| 24 | Indian Oil | Energy Utilities | 2008 |
| 25 | Infosys Technologies India | Computers | 2008 |
| 26 | Larsen & Toubro | Conglomerates | 2008 |
| 27 | Mahindra | Conglomerates | 2008 |
| 28 | MSPL | Mining | 2008 |
| 29 | SRF | Conglomerates | 2008 |
| 30 | Sterlite Industries | Mining | 2008 |
| 31 | Tata Motors | Automotive | 2008 |
| 32 | Tata Tea | Food and Beverage Products | 2008 |
| 33 | Varroc Engineering | Equipment | 2008 |
| 34 | Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) | Computers | 2007 |
| 35 | Sesa Goa | Mining | 2006 |
| 36 | Shree Cement | Construction Materials | 2005 |
| 37 | ITC | Conglomerates | 2004 |
| 38 | Jubilant Life Sciences Ltd | Chemicals | 2004 |
| 39 | Reliance Industries Limited | Conglomerates | 2004 |
| 40 | Tata International | Conglomerates | 2004 |
| 41 | Ford India | Automotive | 2002 |
| 42 | Paharpur Business Centre | Commercial Services | 2002 |
| 43 | Tata Steel | Metals Products | 2002 |
| 44 | TATA | Automotive | 2001 |
Considering the importance of sustainability in businesses, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India has launched Corporate Social Responsibility Voluntary Guidelines (2009). This voluntary CSR Policy addresses six core elements – Care for all Stakeholders, Ethical functioning, Respect for Workers’ Rights and Welfare, Respect for Human Rights, Respect for Environment and Activities for Social and Inclusive Development. At this stage these are voluntary guidelines, but there is a possibility of mandatory guidelines too in the near future.
The companies with GRI based sustainability reports in India have started accounting and then disclosing their impacts on the environment and society. Sustainability reporting is now becoming a standard practice for global companies and If Indian companies want to be a competitive with their global counterparts; need to adopt GRI based sustainability reporting framework positively.
Reference: Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
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View Comments
Unfortunately your list is not updated about the companies reporting to GRI. Reliance industries Limited has been reporting from last seven years and all reports externally assured with GRI A+ level.
Dr. JD Desai
Vice President (Environment)
Thanks for the information. We will surely update the list of companies having GRI report soon. Thanks for letting us know. If you have any other opinions about the content, please let us know. Stay tuned with us for more information on the same topic.
The list is updated now!
While such organizations are considered very responsible, are there some case studies on the benefits accruing to the reporting organizations?
Prof Dr A K A Rathi
Hi, thanks for the comment. GRI Based sustainability reporting is based on stringent guidelines developed by GRI. Maximum assurance is given to the credibility of data and framework of reporting. Environmental and social responsibility of the organization is not depended on their GRI reports, indeed it's just a platform to share its initiatives/actions on improving environmental and social issues. The best example is ITC (ITC has GRI based sustainability report). ITC ventured into wind energy generation with 14 MW capacity to serve the power demand of various units under its purview. In addition, ITC developed social forest project. Please click here to read case study on ITC green initiatives.
Could you share a link of the updated list of companies doing GRI based sustainability reports in India? I feel this list is missing out some companies and not fully updated.
We will keep on updating the present list. Please allows us for some time. We will update the current list with latest information. Meanwhile please subscribe by email to receive email updates of every new content on GreenCleanGuide.com
Thanks Shailesh for comment on GRI.Could you share the updated GRI Reporting of both pvt and public Ltd companies in India? It will be very much usefull for my research.
Thanking You
Sushanta
We are in the process of updating this list. Please allow us for some time.
Can you please submmit the list of companies in India doing GRI based sustainability reporting?
Hi Shweta,
Thanks for your comment. The list of companies with GRI Based Sustainability reports is already mentioned in the post. However, it is difficult to find the name of the company that is currently developing GRI based sustainability report. We can check it if the company has published its report in public domain. However, based on SEBI's circular (on August 13, 2012) that mandates listed companies to submit Business Responsibility Reports (BRR), as part of their annual report, we can keep our eye on these companies (As some companies may opt for GRI based reporting guidelines).
can u pls provide the updated list of companies which are publishing their sustainability reports. the list here shows as per year 2011. can you show such a list upto 2012?
Can u please provide the updated list of companies as Annual activity Review was organized in 2013 and GRI-G4 guidelines is available now. The list here shows as per year 2012. Can you please update the data of 2013.
With SEBI making Business Responsibility & Sustainability Report (BRSR) mandatory for listed companies from Fy 22-23, how will the scenario change in terms of these and other companies making their CRI reports vs generating BRSR? Also, were these companies publishing their Business Responsibility Report (BRR), the older version of BRSR, along with GRI report?