The other day on a busy thoroughfare in Chennai, there was a swanky-looking machine positioned over a manhole. It was being used to clean the sludge in the manhole. The machine had been designed, developed and manufactured by Solinas Integrity Pvt. Ltd. , a start-up incubated at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras . Solinas has developed robots to end manual scavenging. This particular machine, HomoSEP, is meant to clear bottom sludge in manholes. The machine can pump out the slurry using a suction mechanism to a storage tank mounted on a multi-purpose vehicle and which can then be transported to a treatment plant without spoiling the environment. Quite often, the public utilities responsible for clearing clogged sewer lines leave the sludge either on the roadside or near the manhole itself after using manual labour or out-dated machines to remove the blocks.
This article, however, isn't about Solinas Integrity's innovative HomoSEP solution for clearing blocked sewers and septic tanks but to highlight its deployment through the corporate social responsibility initiative of a public sector oil refiner. Chennai Petroleum Corp. Ltd (Indian Oil) jointly with IIT Madras. This is an example of how companies are using the mandatory provisions of the CSR Act to engage with startups in meaningful ways. The funding helps startups in the early stages of their journey, quite often enabling them to validate their technology or product.
There are numerous such initiatives where companies help and support start-ups in their journey. Take the case of Angirus® IND , an Udaipur-based venture that collects single use plastic and non-recyclable industrial waste to convert them into building materials such as bricks and paver blocks. Angirus was part of the AIM PRIME programme cohort at the Pune-based Technology Business Incubator Venture Center. After the end of this nine-month accelerator programme, Angirus applied for CSR funding, again through Venture Center, and received CSR support from Technip Energies India and Cummins. According to Kunjpreet Arora, Co-Founder and CEO, Angirus, the funds helped in the development of the pilot project that they were running. Once the funds were utilized, the company was required to report on the usage, the milestones achieved, and the social impact created. Venture Center also closely monitored the performance throughout the process.
“If we had not got this (CSR grants), it would have taken us longer to get the funding through government grants and would have delayed the product development. Early-stage companies like ours, which are capital intensive and into manufacturing products, require a lot of funding initially for R&D and trials. We were developing a machinery,” Kunjpreet says. The CSR grants are always disbursed on time.
According to Section 135 of the Companies Act, companies having a net worth of ₹500 crores or more, or a turnover of ₹1,000 crores or more, or a net profit of ₹5 crores or more during the immediately preceding three years, should constitute a CSR committee and allocate 2 per cent of the average net profit during those three years to CSR activities. In 2019, the Government allowed a part of this CSR fund to be given to technology incubators. Venture Center is one of the incubators that handles CSR grants. It collaborates with leading companies like Persistent Systems, Bajaj Auto Ltd, Cipla Foundation, Cummins India, Technip Energies India, PubMatic India, and Indus Biotech Limited through their CSR initiatives to administer and monitor impactful projects and grants, driving meaningful change.
The India CSR Outlook Report 2023 (10 years of CSR compliance in India and envisioning the next 10 years) published in October 2023 by CSRBOX and NGOBOX shows that the CSR spend by about 250 large companies increased from ₹5,563 crores in 2014-15 to ₹12,891 crores in 2023-23. The report also states that a little over a fifth of the companies have healthcare and WASH (Water, Sanitation and Healthcare) as their CSR priority, followed by Environment and Sustainability at 23 per cent and Promotion of Education with 23 per cent. Nearly 55 per cent of the companies that were surveyed by the report preferred government partnerships for their CSR projects. What is even more interesting is that, half the companies preferred to execute their CSR projects in partnerships with implementing agencies, which is of interest to organisations such as Venture Center.
According to the report, two-thirds of companies prefer that the CSR projects they fund should last more than three years for better outcome and impact.
According to Amruta Gore, Assistant Manager – Impact Projects, Venture Center, the money that Venture Center receives and administers as CSR grants has been increasing every year over the last eight years. In 2023-24, it got about ₹2.25 crores against ₹1.5 crores the previous year.
"Till date, Venture Center has supported nearly 30 start-ups through the CSR grants. Most CSR partner companies focus on the areas of their interest while some are sector agnostic. CSR grants provide startups with more than just funding—they open doors to crucial mentorship, potential partnerships, and access to valuable resources offered by the partnering companies." - says, Amruta Gore , Assistant Manager - Impact Projects at Venture Center.
Persistent Foundation, the CSR arm of Persistent Systems, works in the areas of health, education, community development and preservation of heritage and wildlife. It funds projects in the geographies where Persistent has offices and operates in Pune and Nagpur districts, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, and in Goa. Besides, it recently started operations in Indore and Gurgaon.
“We start small with a company or organisation and then we grow our relationship over a period of time, because we want to see the impact and how the funds are helping,” says Yogita Apte , Lead – CSR, Persistent Systems.
She says that they monitor how the money is spent. “We do not work like a funding organisation. For a solar project, we identified more vendors and the project size increased from 100 kW to 112 kW. We tracked the project on a weekly basis. There is an active engagement and monitoring that takes place in every project we implement,” says Apte.
Cummins India works in the areas of higher education, energy and environment, and equality of opportunity. “We work with people with vulnerabilities and those from marginalised communities,” says Soujanya Veguru, General Manager – CSR, Cummins India.
According to her, cleantech and clean energy are major areas of interest for Cummins. The company started scouting for organisations that were supporting clean tech ventures so that it could focus on innovations in this space. That is how Cummins’ association with Venture Center started. During Covid, Cummins worked with Venture Center to come out with ways to dispose of face masks in an eco-friendly manner, says Veguru. She reached out to Venture Center to see if there was any company or start-up that could help in this. PadCare Labs, a start-up incubated at Venture Center, which is into recycling soiled sanitary napkins, fit the bill. Cummins worked with PadCare to install machines in a few housing societies in Pune to dispose of face masks. “We started supporting five start-ups with ₹5 lakhs each and then we grew the grants to ₹10 lakhs each,” she says.
One of the first start-ups that Cummins supported, PadCare, is still part of Cummins’ CSR efforts. The company has tied up with PadCare to have safe disposal of sanitary napkins in 40 schools run by the Pune Municipal Corporation. Cummins works with another start-up Craste, which uses agriculture waste to make packaging boards, on another programme and with Rechargion Energy, which is into green energy storage solutions, where the company’s engineers were involved in a knowledge-exchange programme.
"In addition to Venture Center, Cummins also works with the Climate Collective platform where it supports five start-ups. In all, between Climate Collective and Venture Center, Cummins supports 10 start-ups a year to a total of ₹1 crore from its CSR funds. Cummins would, however, like to see more technical collaborations wherever possible between the start-ups it supports and the company’s engineering team.", says Soujanya Veguru, Head - CSR, Cummins, India.
Indus Biotech, according to Aditya Bhaskaran, Manager – Business Development, focuses specifically on schools around its factories in Mulshi and Satara to develop hygiene and sanitation in these schools. It also funds impact projects for communities in the margins of society. It has funded a project in a tribal village in Tamil Nadu.
"Indus Biotech collaborates with Venture Center and IIT Madras to fund science and technology initiatives," says Bhaskaran. "We’re sector-agnostic and have supported projects like an electric vehicle battery company. We’re also keen to work in areas like biopharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals. Startups often tell us how valuable the funding has been—it gives them the confidence of having an early-stage backer. The grant provides a crucial window for them to refine their technology or idea before moving on to the next stage of funding."
Divyakshi Kaushik, Founder and CEO, Anatomech, which has launched a line of compression products mainly used for healthcare applications and sports recovery uses, says the start-up got its first CSR grant from Bajaj. Overall, it has received about ₹13 lakhs of CSR funds. The first CSR grant helped the company validate, iteratively build a prototype and showcase it for other grants. The grants helped the company continue with its product development during a gap period of four-five months before it could get funds under a different grant.
“We are always so restricted with funds or funding opportunities and these grants help us mainly in expediting the product development or the testing phases, for which we would have otherwise have to wait longer,” says Kaushik. The grants enables the company to run two-three things in parallel rather than do them sequentially.", says Divyaskshi.
Ashish Gawade, Co-founder, Jeevtronics Pvt Ltd , which makes hand-cranked defibrillators, says the company got a grant from Cummins which it used to distribute its defibrillators in a government hospital and to an NGO.
Dr. Jyotirmayee Dash, Director and CEO, TeraLumen Solutions, which develops medical devices using multispectral technology, says her company got CSR funds from Indus Biotech that it used for clinical trials of its prototype. TeraLumen has availed of multiple CSR grants from various companies, including Indus Biotech, DANA and Pfizer Innovation grant.
“The CSR grants helped us in many ways, including extensive clinical trials and regulatory approval. It also helped to make the product market ready by completing rigorous clinical trials,” she says.
Shyam kishore Choudhary, AVP – Process and Technology, Technip Energies India, says the company uses its CSR funds in three sectors – upliftment of society, decarbonisation in alignment with environmental sustainability needs of the community. It has assisted a company involved in decarbonisation and another one that is working to provide 24x7 electricity in a rural area. Technip Energies India, he adds, works with and assists start-ups in other ways apart from CSR grants.
Over the years, the CSR grants have resulted in companies forging stronger relationships with start-ups, especially with regard to knowledge-sharing and helping out the start-ups with technology and product validation.
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