Include social returns in business model: Mukesh

Reliance Industries Ltd Chairman Mukesh Ambani on Sunday urged Corporate India to adopt a new business model measured on ‘social returns together with financial returns’ — a model that factors in attributes of the country’s value systems.

Delivering a lecture on corporate social responsibility (CSR) organised by the Madhya Pradesh Foundation, Ambani said CSR needs to be “an integral part of the DNA of a company. It has to be an organic part of the business.”

“Businesses will not only have to act as the trustees of their shareholders or owners but will also have to care for the society by the virtue of the license given to them by the society itself. The businesses should be measured on social returns together with financial returns,” Ambani said. The RIL chairman pitched for an Indianised approach towards CSR initiatives, imbibing Indian ethos and values systems.

“We will have to move from the model of CSR to a model of continuous social business through enterprise and entrepreneurship… where societal needs and gaps are seen as duties as opposed to just business opportunities,” he said.

This would help in integrating 400 million marginalised Indians into mainstream social and economic fabric in the coming decades, he added.

Planning commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, also present on the occasion, suggested a new model of CSR initiative for the corporate houses in which at least one year sabbatical is given to the young entrants, who are willing to work for a social cause or in an NGO.