First Steps Towards Sustainability Through SDGs and ESGs


Smita Mishra, Founder- Fandoro]


Tech and tech-enabled are some of the fastest-growing startups in the current market. Whether we are looking at FinTech, Ed Tech, Health Tech, etc. Most of these startups struggle to understand the relevance or even their part of the responsibility when it comes to sustainability — majorly because there was no formal mandate laid down towards sustainability by the regulatory authorities until the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and SEBI bough Business Responsibility Sustainability Report. However, the MCA guidelines have kept it mandatory only for the top 1000 listed companies (by the size of the market cap) and unlisted companies above a certain threshold of revenue. The guideline does suggest other companies (listed or not ) adopt BRSR Lite and publish. More details can be found here:


The level of awareness on sustainability practices, disclosures, and reporting is very low, unlike Corporate Social Responsibility which is a regulatory mandate with a low applicability barrier. Whether an enterprise falls under the mandatory requirement for sustainability reporting or not, it should consider its exposure, dependency, and therefore responsibility towards sustainability.

Technology has the power to impact each and every sustainable development goal. And therefore tech and tech-enabled enterprises have a significant relevance towards achieving SDGs.

Another approach towards measuring the sustainability contribution of an enterprise is by measuring businesses’ ESG scores or progress on ESG metrics.

A sample view

Some of the Sample examples of actions taken by technology enterprises towards sustainable development:

  • Developing Green Products (that are based on colar energy for charging)
  • Employee Engagement in Sustainable Practices
  • Product Life Cycle Assessments for sustainability
  • Proper compliance to labor laws and respecting human rights
  • Educating consumers about sustainability

How are the global enterprises approaching sustainability disclosures?

Some of the countries where Non-Financial disclosures are adopted in some form by government-mandated/ voluntary and therefore businesses planning to work in these nations should actively consider looking at sustainability in alignment with the local requirement in these nations.


This article is part of the IvyScope Issue October 2021 click here to view the Newsletter.

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