In April 2025, SEBI made Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting mandatory for the top 1,000 listed Indian companies by market capitalisation. For many of them, it marked the first time they had attempted to quantify their environmental impact, measure social metrics, or document governance processes against an external framework. The experience was, for many, revelatory — not in a comfortable way.

Most Indian enterprises do not have the data infrastructure to support credible ESG disclosure. Energy consumption data is split across facilities with different metering arrangements, some of which are not digitised. Supply chain emissions data requires cooperation from vendors who may not have their own measurement capability. Social metrics — employee safety incident rates, supply chain labour practices, community investment — are tracked inconsistently or not at all.

The European Union's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, effective from 2025 for large EU companies and their value chain partners, will require ESG disclosure from Indian suppliers to European enterprises. The SEC's climate disclosure rules in the United States, once finalised, create similar supply chain pressure. Indian exporters to these markets will face procurement qualification requirements linked to ESG performance.

The enterprises navigating this transition successfully are treating it as a data infrastructure problem as much as a sustainability strategy problem. Implementing energy metering at the asset level, building emissions calculation capability into financial systems, establishing supplier data collection processes, and deploying sustainability reporting software — Watershed, Persefoni, or equivalently capable platforms — is the foundational work that makes credible disclosure possible.