Bharti Airtel launches its first Sustainability Report for India operations

Bharti Airtel launches its first Sustainability Report for India operations

·        Presents company’s approach, initiatives & future plans across social and environmental development
·        Reports 11% reduction in Green House Gas (GHG) emissions per terabyte in network infrastructure
·        Presents company’s blueprint on ‘Social Inclusion’
India, January 11, 2012 – Bharti Airtel, a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa, today launched its first Sustainability Report for its India operations. The report also touches upon the company’s sustainability initiatives in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Africa.

While India continues to progress and is currently one of the world’s fastest developing economies, the ever increasing population of the country is putting tremendous pressure on its current available resources. This calls for proactive measures towards sustainable development – a path that can be led by corporate, adopting business models and product innovations that contribute towards building an inclusive society and drive environmental conservation. Based on this theory, Airtel’s Sustainability Report 2011-2012 provides a comprehensive overview of the company’s approach, initiatives and future plans across social and environmental development including energy and climate change, waste management, customer service, digital inclusion and community engagement.

Airtel’s Sustainability Report 2011-2012 also introduces the company’s blueprint on ‘Social Inclusion’ - a cornerstone of its sustainability programme. Through this blueprint, the company aims to leverage its wide network & distribution, accessibility, affordable services and ability to manage scale to digitally enable financial, education, health and other services for the masses.

The company has been constantly working along with its partners to reduce Green House Gas emission in its operations. The report discloses an 11% reduction in Green House Gas (GHG) emissions per terabyte in network infrastructure in 2011-12. The company has also been able to save around 20 million KWh of energy through its facilities consolidation and data centre energy efficiency initiatives undertaken so far.

Introducing the first sustainability report, Sanjay Kapoor – CEO (India & South Asia), Bharti Airtel said, “India, the world’s second largest telecom market, provides a remarkable growth opportunity for 1.2 bn people, out of which, 900mn people are connected through mobile. Hence, telcos have a huge role to play in bringing a paradigm shift in the lives of million. Sustainability, for us, hence, cannot remain a static one time agenda – it has to include the entire ecosystem in which we operate. Today India has a low patient to doctor ratio of 1:10,000; there are 100000 schools with only 1 teacher and 50% of the population does not have a bank account while 30,000 bank branches can never service 6,00,000 villages. These critical social gaps can be bridged by telecommunication which can bring wide reaching and affordable healthcare, education and financial services, thereby leading to a remarkable social transformation through Social Inclusion. ”

Bharti Airtel India Sustainability Report - 2011-12 has been developed using the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework, the most accepted framework globally for sustainability reporting. The key audiences for the report are Airtel’s key stakeholders including customers, socially responsible investment sector, employees, industry associations, governments, suppliers and local communities.

The report can be downloaded from www.airtel.in/sustainability