Sustainability Continuum From Internal Action To External Advocacy

Wipro is a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company that employs 200,000 people and serves 1,180 customers across six continents. In FY21, the IT services revenue for Wipro was $8.1 billion, a decline of 1.4 per cent over the previous financial year. The net income was Rs 107.9 billion, which grew 11 per cent year-on-year aided by improved operating margins.  

Sustainability strategy 
Strategic oversight of sustainability programmes at Wipro rests at the corporate level with the Chairman, Board of Directors and Group Executive Council. The board of directors, executive leadership and different functions are responsible for planning, execution, review, evangelization and advocacy of the company’s sustainability charter.  

Thierry Delaporte, CEO & Managing Director said, “Wipro has long since built ecological sustainability practices into its operations and ways of working, often ahead of what has been considered necessary within our industry. We are running a programme of deep decarbonisation across our entire value chain, with the goal of reaching Net Zero emissions by 2040, with an intermediate target of reducing GHG emissions from our operations by 55 per cent, by 2030. A basic principle underlying our efforts will be a predominant focus on direct decarbonisation with deferment of offsets to the target year.”  

Environmental footprint 
Wipro reported a 27.7 per cent decline in energy consumption over FY20. The data centre efficiency (expressed in power usage effectiveness terms) improved from 2.11 in FY20 to 1.61 in FY21. The GHG emissions generated was 447,683 tonnes of which Scope 3 accounted for 78 per cent of the total footprint. Wipro is among the few Indian companies to conduct a monetary evaluation of its environmental impact. In FY21, environmental costs related to operations and supply chain were quantified at $0.20 billion ($0.23 billion in FY20).

Social footprint 
CSR at Wipro is led and managed by the Azim Premji Foundation. During the year, it supported over 1,500 projects covering humanitarian aid, integrated healthcare support, and livelihood regeneration. As part of its Covid-19 efforts, the foundation converted its Pune facility to a fully equipped and staffed 450 bed Covid hospital that saw nearly 5,500 admissions as of March 2021. The company also designed a digital platform for doctors and healthcare experts to exchange and collaborate on emerging good practices in Covid care– the Global Coalition for Covid-19 Medical Care.

Wipro’s initiatives for diversity includes advocacy among suppliers to increase the participation of small and medium enterprises, local / indigenous people, women business-owners, people with disabilities, etc. The company has included diversity as a component in its procurement activities and is focusing on widening the supplier base to include women, minority owned enterprises and MSMEs.