Ask most Indian founders where sustainability sits in their organisation and they’ll point to the CSR line — a fixed percentage, a compliance obligation, a separate team that reports separately, budgeted separately, and evaluated on a separate set of metrics from the business itself. That placement is the problem. Anything that lives in a line item can be cut when the line item comes under pressure. Nothing that matters to a brand’s survival should be that easy to cut.
The honest gap first
I’ll say the uncomfortable part before the argument: most sustainability claims in Indian marketing today are still closer to decoration than to strategy. A recyclable-packaging line on a pack that hasn’t changed its sourcing, a sustainability report published once a year and read by almost no one who buys the product — this is real, and it’s exactly what gives the word “sustainability” a credibility problem with consumers who’ve learned to be skeptical of it. Acknowledging that isn’t a concession that weakens the case for sustainability-led growth. It’s the reason the case has to be made on commercial terms, not moral ones.
What changes when it moves into the P&L
The shift I push every client toward is structural, not rhetorical: sustainability stops being a report and becomes a set of decisions inside the business model itself — sourcing, packaging, energy, supply chain — each evaluated the same way you’d evaluate any other cost or growth lever, with a number attached. Not “we care about the planet.” Specifically: this sourcing change reduces input volatility by X, this packaging change reduces a real cost line by Y, this supply chain change opens a category of institutional buyers — governments, exporters, EPCs — who now screen for it as a condition of doing business, not a nice-to-have.
That last point matters more than most founders realise. I’ve sat across the table from export promotion councils and institutional buyers where a credible sustainability posture wasn’t a differentiator — it was table stakes to even get shortlisted. That’s not ESG theatre. That’s a commercial gate, and brands that treated sustainability as decoration are finding themselves on the wrong side of it.
Earth Stewardship as a pillar, not a department
In the Earthshastra framework, this is Earth Stewardship — one of four pillars sitting alongside Cultural Roots, Inclusive Commerce, and Purposeful Innovation, not above or separate from them. The pillar only does its job when it’s woven into how the business actually operates, not presented as a slide at the end of the deck after the “real” strategy has already been decided.
Where to start
Not with a report. Start with one sourcing or packaging decision that has a real cost line attached, make the case for changing it in commercial terms, and let the sustainability story follow the decision instead of trying to lead it. A campaign built on a decision that hasn’t actually been made yet is the fastest way to earn the skepticism I mentioned at the start.