Media365
4 min readOct 13, 2026 05:40 PM IST
First published on: Oct 13, 2026 at 05:40 PM IST
India has quietly created one of the world’s largest pools of private sector-led development finance through its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) law. What began as corporate compliance legislation in 2014, where companies crossing any of the three thresholds — Rs 500 crore in net worth, Rs 1,000 crore in turnover or Rs 5 crore in net profit — are mandated to spend 2 per cent of their net profits on CSR, has mobilised Rs 2.6 lakh crore in 10 years.
Recent reports indicate the annual CSR spend of Rs 40,794 cr in 2024-25, contributed by 29,500 companies supporting 72,000 projects. This is perhaps the world’s largest example of mandatory private-sector contribution.
India Inc. deserves credit. This is no longer charity at the margins of corporate balance sheets. It is a significant source of crucial development capital. The success of the CSR experiment in mobilising money must now evolve to maximising impact across the country and sectors.
The latest numbers show why: Maharashtra received Rs 8,631 crore, Gujarat Rs 4,549, Karnataka Rs 3,395 and Delhi Rs 2,753 crore of CSR funds last year. Together, these four states accounted for more than Rs 20,000 crore. Where companies are located can become a stronger determinant of CSR deployment than where India’s development deficits are greatest.
Optimising the impact of the CSR funds will be a crucial opportunity. The issue is not that CSR money is being poorly spent; much of it is extremely valuable in supporting education, health, and livelihoods. The larger question is what the thousands of individual projects are adding up to. As the CSR pool continues to grow, the opportunity is to optimise its strategic value. That requires greater attention to where the money goes and what outcomes they ultimately deliver. This points to three reforms for the next decade of CSR.
First, it is not just about the size of the cheque but also about the change it makes. The accountability framework that currently measures the amount spent will have to be combined with stronger outcome indicators and standardisation of what they measure.
Second, 72,000 projects provide enormous innovation and effort. But fragmented, often repetitive activities must turn into longer-term, strategic interventions. The CSR law already permits companies to collaborate. India Inc. should build on this by creating aggregations and combining funds and efforts around major themes and geographies. Ten companies investing Rs 10 crore individually on often unrelated, isolated projects may each produce useful outputs without changing the underlying system. Ten such companies coming together investing Rs 100 crore against a common results framework can potentially change a district system and have a much larger impact.
Third, CSR is likely to create greater impact when companies deploy not just their money, but also their knowledge, networks and managerial capabilities. An agriculture or food company, for example, may be better placed to support farmer productivity, value chains or climate-resilient agriculture than to fund an unrelated education programme. Aligning CSR more closely with a company’s core competency can make each rupee more strategic and scalable.
The real headline is not simply that Indian companies now spend over Rs 40,000 crore annually on CSR. It is what this capital could achieve to move national indicators — not as a substitute for public expenditure, but as a supplement to it. It also comes as a reminder that profit and purpose reinforce each other in creating value not only for the country but also for the companies that are standing by it.
The writer is a senior technology advisor. Views are personal
