Why India Needs a Blackstone of Impact: The Case for Curated CSR

On a humid July morning, Anu—the CSR head of a leading tech firm—opens her inbox to find more than twenty proposals. Rural education pilots, water purification systems, skill-training programs: each promising impact, each competing for her attention. She can fund only a handful. Which of these will create lasting change, and which will fade within a year? What Anu longs for is a way to cut through the clutter and allocate her company’s limited CSR budget with the same rigor her CFO applies to capital—strategically, with a portfolio mindset.

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away in a tribal block of Jharkhand, a group of children sit in a makeshift classroom, trying to make sense of a digital literacy program. The tablets had arrived last year through a corporate CSR initiative, and trainers visited briefly to conduct sessions. But without electricity, internet connectivity, or local facilitators to sustain the effort, the program lost momentum. What began with excitement has now ended in dusty tablets lying unused in a cupboard—another well-meaning project that struggled to translate into lasting impact.

These stories are not exceptions but part of a familiar pattern in India’s CSR landscape—where donors, overwhelmed by scattered choices, often back projects that sparkle at the start but falter without continuity, leaving communities with fragmented, short-lived interventions.

When India became the first country in the world to mandate CSR through Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013, it redefined the role of business in development. Over the decade since the law came into force, companies have spent more than ₹1.5 trillion on CSR1. Annual expenditure has climbed from about ₹10,000 crore in 2014–15 to nearly ₹34,900 crore in 2023–24².

The majority of CSR expenditure has been concentrated in education and healthcare, which together account for nearly half of all allocations since the mandate came into effect3. Annual outlays have risen consistently, and CSR has shifted from a voluntary, ad hoc practice to a mainstream line item in corporate balance sheets4. In other words, CSR is no longer a peripheral add-on to business operations but an institutionalized component of corporate strategy.

Yet numbers alone do not tell the full story. A recent KPMG observed that a significant share of projects remain “standalone”—short-term, narrow in scope, and disconnected from systemic change.5 According to NITI Aayog (2021), while companies engage in a range of CSR activities, the absence of standardized monitoring and evaluation often results in initiatives that fail to sustain long-term developmental outcomes. This fragmentation means classrooms with computers but no teachers, health vans that disappear after a year, and livelihoods programs that collapse once funding shifts. For communities, it results in broken promises; for companies, it brings reputational risks and limited developmental returns.

The paradox is stark: India is spending significantly on CSR—₹34,908 crore in 2023–24 alone—but continues to struggle with depth, durability, and equitable reach.

The solution may lie in thinking about CSR the way financial markets think about capital. Just as investors curate portfolios to balance risk, opportunity, and long-term returns, CSR too can benefit from deliberate, strategic allocation.