Marico, India’s leading consumer goods company, supports a holistic set of initiatives that promotes environmental stewardship and generates sustainable livelihoods.

Among the initiatives is a social value creation programme, Parachute Kalpavriksha, which equips farmers with scientific and climate-resilient farming methods to promote sustainable agriculture while improving their productivity and income generation opportunities.

The programme has helped to construct farm ponds with the conservation potential of more than 477 million litres of water in Financial Year (FY) 2022. To date, it has enrolled approximately 63,000 farmers, encompassing 255,000 acres of farms, and has observed 15 per cent year-on-year productivity improvement. The dedicated agronomists deployed for this programme empower farmers with sustainable farming practices through a plethora of services like nutrient and disease management, integrated water management, soil health efficiency and pest management.

A Tamil Nadu farmer accesses Marico’s Parachute Kalpavriksha app to learn about sustainable farming techniques

Water stewardship

Marico has additionally developed a long-term strategy with precise key performance indicators (KPIs) to create sustainable water usage. Jalashay, Marico’s water stewardship programme, has been designed to optimise resource consumption patterns and improve significant water conservation potential in the country’s water-stressed regions. Through Jalashay, Marico has created more than 2,630 million litres of water conservation potential to date, more than three times the total amount consumed across its operations.

A farm pond constructed under the Jalashay programme in Pollachi, Tamil Nadu, to harvest rainwater

Cultivating a culture of ownership and innovation

As Marico is built on a culture of mutual ownership, it treats its workforce as crucial members of the organisation. Marico’s motto is to empower employees to “Go Beyond, Grow Beyond and Be the Impact.” With its refreshed Talent Value Proposition, Marico encourages employees to be the best version of themselves to contribute towards its business goals and grow with the organisation. The social value creation programme and the strong talent value proposition thus work in tandem to change the future of work by redefining integrity, ownership and trust in the workplace.

Alternatively, every initiative Marico embarks upon is infused with the values of social innovation and creative resilience. The Marico Innovation Foundation, for instance, leverages technology and digital disruption to find, expand and promote social entrepreneurial projects with the potential to hasten national sustainable development. This initiative collaborates with emerging sectors like agri-tech, med-tech and ed-tech to foster social innovation and reimagine key stakeholder concerns as opportunities to drive change and improve lives and livelihoods. To date, the foundation has helped scale over 23 innovations that have upgraded sustainable livelihoods.

Educating and supporting local communities

About four years ago, Marico initiated Nihar Shanti Pathshala Funwala, focusing on upskilling and empowering government schoolteachers to resolve the pressing issue of the lack of consistency and fluency in English literacy within the Indian education system. Through these efforts, the programme has impacted 417,000 students and reached 289,000 teachers as of Marico’s FY2022.

Children enrolled in Nihar Shanti Pathshala Funwala-affiliated schools in Madhya Pradesh learning English

To promote sustainable livelihoods, Marico has subsequently supported local communities and stakeholders located around manufacturing facilities. The community sustenance programme has touched over 300,000 beneficiaries through available healthcare and infrastructural resources. Furthermore, Marico has also benefited over 5.5 million beneficiaries in FY2022 through its Covid-relief activities.

Marico's Decade of Action (2030) roadmap

As the founder and chairman, Mr Harsh Mariwala, said, “Our commitment to responsible growth has always been the focal point of everything we do at Marico. It has been our long-standing belief that sustainable and purposeful businesses will stand the test of time and drive superior long-term performance.” This saying is more valid now than ever before.

Staying true to this, Marico launched its ESG 2.0 framework this year to demonstrate its commitments. This framework serves as a launchpad to Decade of Action (2030) and comprises over 50 KPIs across ESG parameters that are of material relevance to its business ecosystem and its stakeholders, now and in the future.

Moving ahead, Marico wants to deepen the penetration of its ESG impact across its business ecosystem. It aims to leverage this framework to allow its value chain partners to build resilient and sustainable business enterprises. Marico’s sustainability goals have been the values-based differentiator for its business. These sustainability goals support stakeholder capitalism, social inclusion, responsible production and consumption, and a deep-seated impact on the communities, which have helped the company thrive. Therefore, Marico endeavours to future-proof its value creation paradigms to positively impact its stakeholders’ lives.

Posted 11 July 2023