Bharti Airtel, India’s largest telecommunications company, has released its 2017 India Sustainability Report that outlines the operator's approach towards responsible, sustainable business practices and making a positive impact on all stakeholders including customers, suppliers, local communities, investors, employees and government bodies for the entire last year.
Green Initiatives
Bharti Airtel has highlighted the company's Green Initiatives in the report saying that 81% reduction has been done in CO2 emissions across network infrastructure in the last five years and 27% reduction in the last financial year. Besides that, 23% reduction in CO2 emissions per square feet in our facility and 9% reduction in CO2 emissions per rack in data centre operations against 2015-16. That said, Airtel saved over 1280 million sheets of paper since FY 2011-12 on paperless billing initiatives under the Green Initiative.
Furthermore, Airtel has adopted Aadhaar based instant verification process which is secure and eliminates paperwork. A total of 32.7 million such paperless Aadhaar based acquisitions were completed last year, claimed Airtel in its report.
Customer Initiatives
Airtel, last year, unveiled India's first Open Network program, setting a new benchmark for transparency in the industry, by making the entire network information including coverage, site details and signal strength available to customers.
In the meantime, Airtel has doubled its mobile sites in just two years by deploying 180,000 mobile sites. This is the same number deployed over the past two decades.
The report also highlights that Airtel will contribute Rs. 100,000 for every 0.01% increase in call drop rate beyond 1.5% per month against the TRAI prescribed limit of 2%. The amount will be contributed towards the education of the under privileged. "Listening to customers through various touch points - stores, customer care, website, and social media. There is 74% increase in online interactions and 10 million social media queries were answered last year" says Airtel.
Community Initiatives
The company at the moment supported over 254 Satya Bharti School Program, Learning Centers and Quality Support Program through its educational initiatives and benefitted over 43,500 underprivileged children in rural India, impacting over 198,000 underprivileged children cumulatively.
Airtel has benefitted over 3.8 million farmers through the IFFCO-Kisan Sanchar Ltd by undertaking mobile based agriculture awareness and implemented a host of initiatives in the field of disaster relief management, environment protection and other social causes
Other key interventions
To help talent grow through strong learning, mentoring and succession planning, Airtel started conducting Career Fairs, under the 'Win with people' strategy. Over 370 hours of training interventions with over 935,000 man hours of training delivered in FY 2016-17.
Airtel has launched Airtel Payments Bank, the first payments bank in India, further consolidating the government’s agenda of digital payments and financial inclusion in the same period. The Airtel Payments Bank enabled over 1000 villages to go cashless across India with over 250000 banking points and onboarding merchants who accept digital payments already setup across the country.
Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO India & South Asia, Bharti Airtel said, “As part of our governance DNA, we attach a deep sense of purpose to the way we conduct our business and ensure it has a positive impact on all stakeholders. Being a responsible corporate citizen, we have implemented a host of sustainability initiatives across the organisation and remain fully committed to building on this strong foundation.”
