MUMBAI: Bharti Airtel (Airtel), India’s largest telecommunications company, has released its 2017 India Sustainability Report that outlines its approach towards responsible, sustainable business practices and making a positive impact on all stakeholders including customers, suppliers, local communities, investors, employees and government bodies.

Bharti Airtel MD & CEO (India & south Asia) Gopal Vittal said, “As part of our governance DNA, we attach a deep sense of purpose to the way we conduct our business and ensure it has a positive impact on all stakeholders. Being a responsible corporate citizen, we have implemented a host of sustainability initiatives across the organization and remain fully committed to building on this strong foundation.”

Green Initiatives

81% reduction in CO2 emissions across network infrastructure in the last five years and 27% reduction in the last financial year.
23% reduction in CO2 emissions per square feet in our facility and 9% reduction in CO2 emissions per rack in data centre operations against 2015-16
Airtel saved over 1280 million sheets of paper since FY 2011-12 on paperless billing initiatives.
Adopted Aadhar based instant verification process which is secure and eliminates paperwork
Managed to recycle 2400 tonnes of e-waste and refurbished over 500,000 direct-to-home set top boxes
Over 1200 tonnes of paper have been saved since FY 2011-12 with the paperless billing initiative, over 170 millions have opted for e-bills. 191 tonnes of paper was saved across facilities

Adopted Aadhar based instant verification process which is secure and eliminates paperwork. 32.7 million such paperless Aadhar based acquisitions were completed last year.

Customer Initiatives

Unveiled India’s first Open Network, setting a new benchmark for transparency in the industry, by making the entire network information including coverage, site details and signal strength available to customers.
Doubled mobiles sites in just two years by deploying 180,000 sites. This is the same number deployed over the past 20 years.
Self-regulation: Airtel will contribute INR 100,000 for every 0.01% increase in call drop rate beyond 1.5% / month against the TRAI prescribed limit of 2%. The amount will be contributed towards education of the under privileged.

Listening to customers through various touch points - stores, customer care, website and social media. There is 74% increase in online interactions and 10 million social media queries were answered last year.

Community Initiatives

The company supports over 254 Satya Bharti School Program, Learning Centers and Quality Support Program through its educational initiatives and benefitted over 43,500 underprivileged children in rural India, impacting over 198,000 underprivileged children cumulatively.

Benefitted over 3.8 million farmers through the IFFCO-Kisan Sanchar Ltd by undertaking mobile based agriculture awareness Implemented a host of initiatives in the field of disaster relief management, environment protection and other social causes

Other key interventions

Deployed a ‘Win with people’ strategy. To help talent grow through strong learning, mentoring and succession planning, started conducting Career Fairs. Over 370 hours of training interventions with over 935,000 man hours of training delivered in FY 2016-17

Launched Airtel Payments Bank, the first payments bank in India, further consolidating the government’s agenda of digital payments and financial inclusion.

Enabled over 1000 villages to go cashless across India, through enabling Airtel Payments Bank accounts with over 250000 banking points and onboarding merchants who accept digital payments