In this edition of India’s Most Sustainable Companies awards, BT partnered with CareEdge-ESG, a Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi)-registered ESG Rating Provider (ERP), to develop a comprehensive assessment framework, incorporating both quantitative metrics and qualitative factors. Relying upon publicly available disclosures for this assessment, CareEdge-ESG has shortlisted top three performers in each of the 15 awards categories, from a universe of top 1,000 listed entities.
To select the most remarkable companies, CareEdge-ESG evaluated the top 1,000 NSE-listed companies as per market capitalisation. Subsequently, 12 sectors were shortlisted based on their impact on the environmental and social themes. Further, the companies were grouped based on the similarity in their business model. A total of 183 companies made the cut.
To arrive at the rankings, the companies were assessed on the basis of nine core categories, across environment and social themes. Some categories include biodiversity, human rights, carbon and other emissions, packaging materials, privacy and data security, among others. Additionally, a single core category of oversight on sustainability was considered under the governance theme, across all sectors.
The assessment predominantly focussed on FY24 data disclosures across policy framework, initiatives and sustainability performance of the companies. Additionally, the assessment framework incorporated companies’ transition performance from FY23 to FY24. The final sustainability standing factored in the aggregated scores using theme weights and core category weights, based on their sectoral relevance.
As a final step, the names of the top three companies in each award category were placed before the jury, led by former State Bank of India Chairman Rajnish Kumar, for further deliberation. Other jury members included Deepali Pant Joshi, Former Executive Director, Reserve Bank of India; Mehul Pandya, Managing Director & Group CEO, CareEdge Group; Vimal Bhandari, Chairman of the Board, HDFC Trustee Company Ltd; Kamran M. Khan, MD & Head of Sustainable Finance for APAC, ME and Africa, Deutsche Bank Group; Srinath Sridharan, Corporate Advisor; and K. Ravichandran, Director, IIFM.
