Case Study > Streamlining BRSR Reporting for Subex Limited
BRSR Case Study

Streamlining BRSR Reporting for Subex Limited

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Written by

Prashanth Joseph, Head of ESG Impact Grows

Published on

12th January 2024

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Indroduction

Subex Limited, a prominent telecom AI company, listed among India's top 1000 companies by market cap, had to submit a comprehensive Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) for the fiscal year 2022-2023, in accordance with SEBI's regulations. As an institution that has been actively engaged in Business Responsibility Reporting (BRR) in prior years, the transition to BRSR represented a significant step towards embracing a more intricate and data-intensive reporting process. Subex Limited was keen to demonstrate a strong commitment to Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations, which fuelled its determination to publish an extensive BRSR report, even though it was the first time the firm was going to do it.

BillionLives Services

To navigate the challenges of BRSR reporting and ensure a seamless transition, Subex Limited partnered with BillionLives, a firm specialising in ESG consulting and technology solutions. BillionLlives provided consulting expertise, enabled by its in-house ESG software platform, Impact Grows. The platform helps companies streamline their ESG management needs and generate sustainability reports on various global frameworks, including BRSR.

Impact Grows Software Platform

The Impact Grows platform empowers companies to bolster their sustainability performance by offering a range of functionalities, including:

  • ESG Maturity Self-assessment: A tool to gauge the company's maturity in implementing ESG practices.
  • Supplier ESG Maturity Assessment: Evaluating suppliers' ESG performance to enhance the overall supply chain sustainability.
  • Materiality Assessment: Identifying and prioritising ESG issues relevant to the company's stakeholders.
  • ESG Strategy: Developing a robust ESG strategy aligned with the company's Material objectives.
  • Central Data Hub: A centralised repository for ESG data to ensure data accuracy and accessibility.
  • ESG Reports in Multiple Formats: Enabling the generation of ESG reports in various global reporting formats such as GRI, SASB, BRSR etc.

Approach and Methodology

Recognizing the complexities associated with BRSR reporting, BillionLives took a hands-on approach to guide Subex Limited through the process. The collaboration followed a comprehensive methodology, detailed below:

  • Gap Identification: The first phase involved analysing the disparity between the data disclosed in the company's previous BRR and annual reports and the requirements stipulated by BRSR. This process was crucial to understand the extent of data collection and reporting adjustments needed.
  • Stakeholder Engagement: Through close coordination with Manappuram's Secretarial team, the BillionLives team engaged with various internal stakeholders. These engagements helped identify the responsible parties for data provision and the specific data points required.
  • Data Collection and Consolidation: The stakeholders' input facilitated the establishment of data collection processes. This phase involved determining the already-reported data points, identifying the available data, and defining processes to collect the missing data.
  • ESG Strategy: Developing a robust ESG strategy aligned with the company's Material objectives.
  • Impact Grows Platform Implementation: Leveraging the capabilities of the Impact Grows platform, the BillionLives team imported the collected data. The platform's existing mapping of BRSR disclosures, streamlined the alignment of data with the relevant disclosure questions.
  • Report Generation: Once data collection was completed and verified, the Impact Grows platform simplified the report generation process. With a single click, the platform produced a comprehensive report, which could be edited to comply with Manappuram Finance's formatting requirements.

Outcome:

Since this was the first-year companies were reporting on BRSR framework, Subex Limited encountered challenges, primarily related to adjusting to novel data pre-requisites and establishing efficient data collection procedures. Nevertheless, through robust cooperation amongst stakeholders and the support of BillionLives team, these obstacles were effectively overcome. The adoption of the Impact Grows software platform not only streamlined the report generation process, but also ensured precision in data collection and compliance with BRSR disclosure stipulations. BillionLives team was able to suggest areas where Subex Limited could demonstrate its commitment to sustainability. This collective endeavour culminated in the development of a thorough BRSR report, highlighting the steps taken by Subex Limited in its push towards contributing to a sustainable future.

Mr. Krishnakanth

G.V, Company Secretary,

Subex Limited

We are extremely happy to see the outcome of our BRSR reporting engagement with BillionLives. As this was the first time companies were doing this exercise, we initially faced a lot of challenges in initiating the process. But once we started engaging with BillionLives team, they guided us step by step on the processes needed to be followed, best practices in BRSR reporting and coordinated with various teams within the company to collect all requisite data and analyse and format it as per SEBI’s guidance. We also had multiple discussions with BillionLives team to arrive at an optimum model that we could use for reporting, since it was a new exercise for us. The team was open to listen to our requests and suggest the best way forward, in a cost-effective manner.