Everyone has a different understanding of what ESG means, and confusion over the terminology and the complexity of sustainability reporting and disclosure have led to pushback from businesses over “what is important and what is not,” says Todi.
The former Bain management consultant runs the sustainability team of a US$20 billion company that employs 240,000 people across 20 industries in 100 countries. He was appointed lead of sustainability strategy and partnerships in January 2022 and has helmed the team as group chief sustainability officer since July 2024.
In 2022, Mahindra Group – which operates in sectors including real estate, hospitality, car manufacturing, logistics, finance, and renewable energy – committed to be carbon neutral by 2040 and use only renewables by 2030, among other pledges.
It has stuck by its commitments so far.
Speaking on The Eco-Business Podcast in a new series called On the frontlines, which profiles changemakers on the hard edge of sustainable business, Todi said he believes the core elements of ESG will continue to be relevant for businesses, even though the term has become politicised in the United States and is increasingly taboo in some parts of Asia.
The pertinance of one issue in particular – climate – is only going to increase, he said.
Sustainability is really about protecting your business from climate risk.
Ankit Todi, chief sustainability officer, Mahindra Group
“Climate change is not a matter of opinion. It’s a fact,” he said.
“The implications of climate change – both from a risk perspective as well as an opportunity perspective – are going to be very real and impact a wide number of industries in a very significant manner over a short period of time in the near future.”
“When we talk about Scope 2 decarbonisation [the electricity a company uses], the activity will be the same – to reduce emissions by moving to renewable energy. But the terminology will be on energy security and cost savings – because there is a strong business case associated with it,” he said.
Similarly, the actions businesses take to improve their supply chains will focus more on resilience and security, Todi noted.
On this podcast, Todi talks about the development of Mahindra Group’s Planet Positive strategy, where sustainability sits in the organisation, and how he drives the sustainability agenda in a large conglomerate.
“There is no one single thing that defines sustainability leadership. It takes a mix of the right commitments and intent. But at the end of the day, it has to be underpinned by real action,” he said.
To execute the company’s strategy, Mahindra Group has a relatively small central sustainability team, and each of its listed businesses has its own sustainability unit. All in all, the company has about 50 dedicated sustainability staff and a crew of “sustainability enablers” who also play a critical role in executing the strategy, Todi said.
“Sustainability is something that has to be integrated and executed – not just by the sustainability team. Sustainability teams are often advisors and change-makers, but the real action has to be taken by other teams,” he said.
Ankit Todi, CSO, Mahindra Group. Image: Echo.mahindra.com
Tune in as we talk about:
- How Ankit Todi started out in sustainability
- How to prioritise sustainability in a conglomate with 240,000 staff in 100 countries
- Mahindra’s sustainability ambitions
- How is sustainability integrated into Mahindra Group?
- How can sustainability stay relevant at a time of geopolitical uncertainty and ESG backlash?
- How should young professionals approach a career in sustainability?
The edited transcript:
What brought you into the sustainability field?
I was brought up in a small town in India, which is also called the Tea Garden City of India [Dibrugarh in the northeastern state of Assam] and have spent a childhood surrounded by greenery.
A lot of the personal motivation came from the place where I was born. I lived in a clean environment. We have never used water filters. You get clean air, clean water. So I think a lot of love for the environment was from my childhood.
But from a career perspective, I am an electrical engineer by profession. I went to one of the top engineering institutes, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT Delhi).
After that, I spent a decade in management consulting, working on business strategy, investment, and due diligence across a number of different sectors. As I was interviewing for different roles outside of the management consulting ecosystem, I came across the Mahindra Group. It is one of the large business offices in India. It is very well respected.
In the conversation (with Mahindra Group), I figured that there was an intention to elevate the subject of sustainability from being seen as a compliance exercise that is cost-centred to one that is value-centred in a strategic area of work.
It seemed like a very exciting problem to work on.
I did not have any professional background in sustainability, but I was driven by a mix of passion for the environment and the problem statement being interesting – how do you make sustainability value-adding for the business? That is what made me choose my current role.
Mahindra Group is a conglomerate with a presence in many sectors. How do you prioritise what’s most important to the company, and how do you make sure that the sustainability programmes that you run are consistent across the business?
One of the first things we did about three years ago, when I started in this role was to put together a framework to understand what it means to be a sustainability leader. What are the aspects and considerations that one has to take?
In that exercise, we realised that sustainability is a relatively complex topic, unlike financial performance, which is often a bit easier to measure in terms of market capitalisation, revenue, and profits.
There is no one single metric that defines sustainability leadership. It is a mix of the right commitments and intent. Are you moving forward in terms of reducing your environmental impact? How are you navigating the transition of the business – especially with respect to the climate transition. Then it could also include how investors view the space from a ESG lens.
There’s a whole host of things that you have to do. But at the end of the day, all of these have to be underpinned by real action.
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Sustainability teams are often advisors and change-makers – the real action has to be taken by other teams.
Given that we operate in so many different sectors, broadly classified in the manufacturing and services sector, how do we come up with what I call a common programme that can act as a framework for driving all the businesses forward?
That’s where we started with the Planet Positive strategy.
The concept being: how can we operate each of the Mahindra Group companies in a manner that can be considered “planet positive” and integrate sustainability as a core part of the business strategy?
So what does this really mean? There are three pillars to it.
The first pillar is what we call “greening your operations”, which is very relevant in the manufacturing context. There are three or four aspects that we are primarily looking at. Firstly, all the direct emissions of the company – both Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. Also, how do we help all the companies become “water positive”? Then, all the waste management practices – ensuring that each of the locations and factories are zero waste-to-landfill.
The fourth area that we picked up is what we call material circularity. In the manufacturing context we consume a lot of material. So how do you use less material, low emissions material, and recycled material?
The second pillar of action is decarbonising industries. The idea is that there a lot of things that you do can’t be done by a single company. It is dependent on the ecosystem that you operate in.
So the first area of focus was: Can we build a pipeline of green revenues?
In the automotive context it’s about a green product – so, EVs [electric vehicles]. In some cases it may be a green service and for other industries it could also be a “green enabler”. In the finance ecosystem, it could be about: are we financing EVs? That’s an example of being an enabler for the green transition.
Mahindra Group has a renewable energy company [Mahindra Susten] which provides green energy, and we have an operations and maintenance company in the solar sector [Mahindra Teqo]. Company by company – both in the real estate sector and the hospitality sector – we are trying to make similar transitions of what we can do.
Next, we want to move the entire supply chain ecosystem along with us. Now there are a few thousand suppliers that engage with Mahindra. We want to build awareness around the subject that sustainability is not just a good-to-do, but a must-do, and is something that is good for your business. We also want to measure the performance [of companies in our supply chain and incentivise them.
In some cases, they are large enough companies on their own, so we learn from each other. In others cases, there is a lot of handholding and coaching required.
Another area of action is to look at new business models which are circular in nature. This was specifically important in the context of our auto sector. For example, we have a company that does end-of-life vehicle recycling [Cero Recycling].
The third pillar [under the strategy looks at] the intersections: where we are able to positively influence societal outcomes, and where we have a certain degree of influence [even if] it may not be our direct business.
[For example,] a big part of the Mahindra Group operates in the farm economy. We are one of the largest manufacturers of tractors globally. We also have an agri-services portfolio. So between these businesses as well as some of our corporate social responsibility programmes, we are taking some action that helps farmers adopt sustainable practices and become more climate resilient.
In the Indian context, we typically work with smallholder farmers. Many of them will be the first victims of climate change. So it’s important to help them adapt to what is coming.
For example, we have a drip irrigation business. This helps farmers protect their yields over a period of time in case of changes in rainfall patterns. We have a seeds business, which sells sustainable varieties of rice seeds which consume less water.
Over the last 15 years, we have planted about 25 million trees under an agroforestry model, and while working with tribal communities.
Finally, biodiversity conservation. This is an area where we don’t have much direct negative impact, because we don’t operate in industries such as mining where the negative impacts are more prominent.
The policy that we follow is to reduce harm and conserve where possible, because across some of our businesses, we own or manage large tracts of land. So for instance, our solar businesses range across hundreds of acres of land.
The intention is to preserve, conserve and restore local biodiversity wherever we have physical land assets.
And more holistically, I think the other area that we work on as a large companies is climate advocacy, both with the government and with the Indian corporate ecosystem. Because policy has a very close intersection with climate action. Transparency, reporting and disclosure as a large listed company is another area that we focus on.
How do you drive sustainability through the company and how well integrated is sustainability into the various business functions?
We have 10 long-term commitments on ESG; seven of them focus on environment, around carbon neutrality and SBTi [Science-based Targets initiative] targets.
We have a commitment for becoming “water positive”, to send no waste to landfill, and to use 100 per cent renewable energy.
This is something that is very much driven from the top.
Anand Mahindra, our chairman, is a big advocate and champion of climate action, both at the national level and international level.
Our managing director (MD) and CEO for the entire group, Dr Anish Shah, is also very closely involved with sustainability. I’m a part of his extended team at the corporate level.
For a long time we have had the Sustainability Council, which was chaired by Dr Anish Shah. It had the members of some of the large listed companies as well as a few other group executive members.
Through that council, we were able to form the strategy.
We were able to discuss action plans, which were more specific to each of the businesses, and then set the pace for actions to be taken. We had meetings at least once every month or at least eight or nine times a year.
The complexity of the nomenclature around ESG and sustainability should not prevent action.
That has really helped us set a strong base with alignment at the very top.
Now coming to the second part of the question.
Sustainability is a lot about day-to-day actions. It is something that has to be integrated and executed, not just by the sustainability team, but a lot by the other teams.
I often say that sustainability teams are often advisors and changemakers, but the real action has to be taken by other teams. It could be the R&D team, the product team, the procurement team, the operations team, etc.
We have a relatively lean team at the centre. Which is my team of about five to seven members. In each of the listed businesses we have a sustainability team, which varies between two to five people.
In some of the smaller businesses, we have a single individual responsible to drive this because we operate in about 20 different industries. All in all, there are about 50-odd people who are dedicated to sustainability.
We also have sustainability enablers, who are folks who are not part of sustainability, but play a critical role in executing the sustainability plan. For instance, our procurement department has a small team which drives all sustainability action with the suppliers.
Similarly, our Scope 2 decarbonisation work is to a large extent supported by our renewables business. Our operations team plays a big role in driving sustainability when it comes to our resorts and hospitality business.
All in all, there’s a much larger ecosystem of up to a few hundred people at least, who are more closely involved in driving actions across the group.
How do sustainability professionals stay relevant at a time of geopolitical uncertainty and pushback against ESG?
This is a question I’ve been asked often, especially in the last four months due to global developments.
It’s also a topic where I’ve had the chance to engage with a wide variety of stakeholders, both in India but also globally, especially those in the US ecosystem, as well as with investors.
There are two ways to look at sustainability.
One definition of sustainability is a bit more focused on ESG, which is about all aspects of environment, social and governance issues.
The other way to look at sustainability is through a climate lens.
On the former, I do agree that there the conversation gets very muddled. Everyone has a very different understanding of what ESG means.
The sub-components within ESG continue to stay relevant. But the terminology, phrasing and complexity associated with it are where you will see constant ups and downs.
On the environment, the principle of shifting to renewable energy or being more energy efficient – no one is contesting that.
But the complexity associated with reporting and disclosure are places where you may see some pushback on what is important and what is not. Everyone is trying to get something out of that space.
But if I were to take a slightly different view on sustainability, which is from the climate action perspective, then I have no doubt that the relevance of the subject is only going to increase, and in fact going to increase manyfold.
Because to my mind, climate change is not a matter of opinion. It’s a fact.
The implications of climate change, both from a risk perspective as well as opportunity perspective, is going to be very real and impact a wide number of industries in a very significant manner over a relatively short period of time in the near future.
For some industries, the transition is already underway. For a number of other industries, it’s a matter of time that this transition will be very strong.
Taking a slightly US-centric view, the only change that I see is that the terminology in which people will talk about sustainability may change a little bit, but the underlying actions won’t change.
When we talk about Scope 2 decarbonisation, it will become more about energy security. You will still do the same activity, which is reduce emissions by moving to renewable energy, but the explanation or the terminology would be about energy security and cost savings. Because there is a strong business case associated with it as well.
Similarly, a lot of actions around supply chain will be about resilience and security.
So the actions in a lot of ways will continue. The terminology that one uses, or the justification that one uses, will be a lot more business-driven rather than about doing good for society in the global ecosystem.
However, in India, I don’t see that as a problem. Thankfully, the government is very inclined to support climate action. If you look at our recent union budget, there continues to be a strong focus on the energy transition.
Even at the corporate level, the pace at which action and conversations around climate action are happening is only increasing with time.
The other good part is that increasingly more people are beginning to realise that this is a lot more strategic in nature. Either it will help you save costs, or help you capture new business opportunities in EVs, waste manufacturing etc; there is lots of potential for growth.
Also, sustainability is really about protecting your business from climate risk. For instance, in the finance ecosystem, sustainability is a lot about protection from the effects of climate change, especially in your rural or agri portfolio.
I really don’t think the complexity of the nomenclature around ESG and sustainability should prevent action.
Anyone, whether they are board members or investors, who really understands it will realise that it makes sense to continue investing in sustainability, and make it a lot more strategic than it used to be.
What advice do you have for people entering the sustainability field?
We have a lot more young people who are interested in wanting to build a career in climate action and sustainability.
Broadly speaking, there are two ways to think about it.
One is that you have a role which is completely dedicated to the subject, like mine.
The other is that, irrespective of whatever function you work in, there is an element of sustainability and climate action that can be overlaid.
For instance, procurement teams – when they make decisions about which supplier to prioritise and what kind of products to buy, there is a role they can play in choosing the right kind of suppliers who also are doing things on climate action and choosing the right kind of materials.
Similarly, if I were to go to the finance ecosystem, how can the green financing ecosystem be leveraged?
In the marketing and communication angle, how do you talk about climate of the initiatives internally? How are you using your voice for climate advocacy?
A lot of sustainability action will be driven by functions which are not sustainability.
Therefore, whatever role you end up in, you can bring a sustainability lens that will make you much more effective in your job. That’s at least how I look at this space and how I encourage people to think about what they can do if they want to meaningfully contribute.
This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity
