Let’s start with a quick recap. BRSR stands as a comprehensive ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) reporting framework, consisting of 9 principles that each organisation has to adhere to and report against. Across the 9 principles, around 140 metrics are covered across topics - ranging from carbon emissions, waste, air quality to diversity, ethical practices, and the governance of the organisation. This is probably the most comprehensive ESG reporting requirement globally, and any organisation that builds the muscle to capture and report on these metrics will be well served in the coming years.

Specially, for Indian companies which also operate within the EU, they can leverage quite extensively the data and metrics from the BRSR framework to comply with the CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) which has come into effect from 2024.

Nevertheless, the journey has not been without its challenges. Three main pain points where observed

1. The process of collating data for all ESG metrics is time intensive, engaging 30 to 50 stakeholders across diverse departments, including HR, operations, sustainability, and finance.
2. Though the data is gathered and formatted into the Annual report, the data is mostly not analysable - i.e. it’s not easy to conduct trend analysis or outlier analysis on a specific metric as the data is in silos and not integrated
3. There is no easy way to conduct benchmarking. While all companies submit this data and it is publicly available on their websites, there is no repository that helps you compare performance against peers. Having companies submit reports in a XML / XHTML format like the CSRD requirement will help SEBI easily analyse and publish benchmarking reports.

The future trajectory will be intriguing, particularly observing how businesses transform their approach to BRSR from a mere compliance requirement to a strategic tool for driving organisational improvements. Such a paradigm shift will need modifications in the operating model, the right technology infrastructure to store / analyse data, and the development of workflows conducive to effective collaboration and benchmarking.

And for organisations that have not yet created their first BRSR report, we’ve attached below a concise overview of the different themes covered under each principle.

34 themes across the 9 principles. As you can see above, this is exhaustive and covers all possible ESG dimensions. On the flip-side, it is daunting, and can easily make sustainability teams that have to organise this submission to get into a ‘compliance’ mindset. We hope the space evolves with the right tools and expertise to simplify this task as much as possible and get stakeholders to focus on ‘insight’ and not just on getting the data together.

The BRSR requirements, while comprehensive, is a lot to wrap your head around the first time, so hope this helps!