Social and Relationship Capital

We have been using a judicious mix of campaigns– on-air, on-ground and virtual – to reach out to our consumers. Our consumer engagement initiatives are driven by our strong confidence and commitment towards our valued customers. We had rolled out some unbeaten and high-decibel consumer connect initiatives during the year.

Dengue Mukt Bharat in partnership with Government of Uttar Pradesh

We united with local authorities to raise awareness about potential danger of Dengue and benefits of Odomos in helping protect people from mosquito bites. Our team organised fogging of commercial and residential areas in 52 cities and distributed free Odomos samples to residents. This activity helped us reach over 10 lakh individuals.

We have a toll-free number cited on our products, along with an email address, to assist consumers in case of any grievance or query. The calls are attended by our representatives at the Call Center, who seek to address their queries real-time. Some technical queries are also forwarded to our experts, who connect with these consumers and provide them detailed responses.

In case of grievances, the Consumer Cell executives personally reach out to the consumers for a better understanding of the nature of their grievance and to plug any loopholes or for any corrective action that may be needed. Once the complaints are lodged in the system, a unique complaint number is generated, which is shared with the consumer to any future reference. The complaints are immediately forwarded to our local area teams for speedy closure.

In fiscal 2021-22, 4,171 complaints were registered in our consumer grievance redressal system. Of this,4,125 have been resolved in the reporting year and the balance are in the process of being resolved amicably at the close of the year.

We constantly engage with our suppliers in order to embed ESG in our supply chain. Though we do not conduct formal supplier assessments, our Code of Conduct is the guiding document for both our employees as well as suppliers for ensuring adherence to human rights issues such as employee health and safety, provision of standard working conditions, no child or bonded labour, no incidents of encroachment of rights of indigenous people and local communities, zero tolerance to sexual harassment and no discrimination on any grounds. We do not engage with suppliers who violate our Code of conduct.

Our Purchase Order consists of terms of business,which clearly state that the suppliers must not be involved in any unethical practices and comply with the human rights regulations of the geography of operation. In order to make our upstream operation more sustainable, we are in the process of formulating a dedicated Supplier Code of Conduct to set stringent ESG terms of engagement with the suppliers. The Code of Conduct also acts as a management tool for us, which safeguards the organization from any significant socio-environmental supply chain risks.

We are a member of various industry and trade associations such as Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), PHD Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Indian Beverage Association (IBA), Action Alliance of Recycling Beverage Cartons (AARC), PET Packaging Association for Clean Environment (PACE), India Honey Alliance (IHA) etc.

We are also a member of various task forces and forums within these trade bodies. We actively contribute to these forums on policy matters and issues that impact the interest of our stakeholders. Furthermore, we have partnered with these associations in policy development processes but have not been lobbying on any specific issue.

In fiscal 2021-22, there were no financial and in-kind political contributions made by us.

We actively engage with the media to endorse our products in a sustainable way with a plan to drive healthy consumerism. The Fourth Estate is one of our key sources to deliver information to our stakeholders.Additionally, we engage through other mediums such as news articles, TV and print advertisements, banners and hoardings, social media, YouTube influencers and digital campaigns to connect to a wide range of consumers. We believe in sharing accurate information through various mediums, making us one of the most trusted and transparent brands in India.

Social responsibility is ingrained in our company’s DNA with Dabur being actively involved in community development initiative since 1994, two decades before the CSR Rules were notified by the government. Our community development projects focus on the health, safety and livelihood of the community members, especially in the areas where we operate in. We have an established CSR Committee comprising of four Directors and its composition more than adequately meets the requirements of the Companies Act, 2013.We have in place a CSR Policy formulated by the Committee and approved by the Board of Directors. Our policy is inspired by the words of our founder Dr S K Burman who said: “What is that life worth which cannot bring comfort to others”

Our CSR implementation process has been developed keeping in mind the specific needs of the communities that we operate in. We finalise our community initiatives after a thorough understanding of the specific needs of each community through detailed stakeholder engagement. Subsequently, the initiatives are implemented through our CSR foundations as well as through partnered NGOs.

Our initiatives under community development are executed as per the standard guidelines of our CSR policy. At most units, we have CSR professionals to implement the development activities at the ground level. A need assessment study is conducted in collaboration with the communities through baseline survey and focused group discussions.The communities are involved at each step of the assessment, project formulation, implementation and finalization and evaluation process to ensure the effectiveness of our initiatives. Most of all our development programmes are participatory projects with the community members being partners and even contributing towards their effective roll-out.

Some of our initiatives are implemented through NGO partners who assess the need of the communities and provides a proposal as per their need and mutual understanding.

In addition to the five focus areas shown above, we consider Promoting Equality, Skill Development and Women Empowerment, Rural Development and Promotion of Sports as other areas of intervention for community development.

In fiscal 2021-22, the total CSR expenditure amounted to ₹31.16 Crore.

With vulnerable sections of community intensely affected by the second wave of the COVID pandemic, we leveraged our reach to help them navigate these troubled times. Some of our efforts towards this end include:

• Helping frontline workers in their fight against COVID-19 in India
• Supporting community workers, volunteers in Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand
• Providing food and nutrition support to the underprivileged sections
• Supporting agencies, NGOs in COVID assessment
• Supporting COVID Care Centres in Delhi-NCR
• Supporting daily wage workers in Assam with dry ration
• Protecting the health of underprivileged sections in North India
• Driving awareness about COVID-appropriate behaviour
• Medical support to communities all over India
• Setting up COVID Isolation Centres for communities in Assam
• Supporting and promoting government’s COVID Vaccination Drive
• Protecting the health of unvaccinated children
• Vaccination on Wheels project in Uttrakhand to reach out to disabled and aged population

We focus on poverty and hunger reduction by promoting better nutritional practices at all levels and rolling out initiatives that enhance direct and immediate access to food to the neediest. Right now,poverty is contributing to hunger and malnutrition around the country. Given this scenario, we have put together various programmes and initiatives aimed at improving the Health, Nutrition and Safety Standards in rural India, with a particular focus on the girl child.

Swasthya Aur Suraksha

Seeking to improve the health, nutrition and safety standards in rural India with a particular focus on the girl child, Dabur has rolled out an integrated project named Swasthya and Suraksha. The programmes under this project have been specially crafted to not only nurture the health of the girl child, but also provide her the right opportunities to hone her talent and skills, and help them excel in different areas of life.

The project rests on four key pillars:

• Safe and Nutritious Food
• Self-Defence Training
• Promoting Kitchen Garden
• Promoting Health & Well-Being

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As a first step, we organise Safe & Nutritious Food (SNF) campaigns across schools to build awareness amongst the kids about a balanced diet. We also provide them access to nutritional food products and green vegetables. Under this project, we have been distributing seeds of fruit plants and vegetables to the school kids and helping them grow these plants in their kitchen garden to ensure that they have easy access to these fruits and vegetables. The project also helps supplement their household income as the families sell their excess produce in the market.

The third leg of the project focuses on the safety of these kids. Under this, we offer Self-Defence training to girls in villages, to promote life skill for self-protection and self-development among the girls.

The fourth leg of this project focuses on promoting overall health and well-being within the community through health camps, oral hygiene camps and awareness camps on menstrual hygiene.

With schools shut during most part of the year due to COVID restrictions, we focused on supporting the health and nutrition of kids in our operating villages by providing them vegetable seeds and heling them cultivate these plants.

Supporting Nutrition Needs

Special events were organised within the community members to celebrate National Nutrition Week 2021. This event emphasized on the importance of nutrition and health among the community members.

Dietician from Nutrition Rehabilitation Centre (NRC), RMNCH+A Counsellor from Tezpur Medical College and Nutrition Experts from Tezpur Central University conducted special sessions on healthcare during pregnancy, Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF), nutrition for adolescent girls, and anaemia among women. They also briefed the participants on the identification and screening of Severely Acute Malnourished (SAM) and the referral process to Nutrition Rehabilitation Centre. Overall, three villages were covered under this programme benefitting 80 people.

Poshan Maah celebrations were also organized in Uttarakhand with a focus on pregnant and lactating women to build awareness about nutritious food. Special events were organized in two Angawadi centres of Tilpuri village, Uttarakhand which saw participation from around 40 women. Awareness sessions on anemia and other diseases were conducted, and green leafy vegetable seeds distributed to all participants.

Our health focused initiatives are coherent with our motto of being ‘Dedicated to the Health & WellBeing of every Household’. Our initiatives have been drawn out with a clear focus on women and children.

To support in reducing the burden of disease on individuals and the society, we have been providing and supporting health services to communities across India. We work with multiple organisations to combat a variety of diseases and run programmes to educate people. Recognising the fact that schools play a paramount role in shaping a child’s future, we run several initiatives focused on schools and schoolkids. Further, our special initiatives build awareness on the need to build immunity to fight flu and viruses, as also teach the children about proper oral hygiene practices.

Supporting Ambulance Drivers

The unprecedented rise in cases during the second wave of COVID-19, ambulance drivers were seen working round the clock to offer their services to families of COVID patients and victims. Dabur took the onus of supporting these overworked ambulance drivers with a special project during these trying times.

Under the project, Dabur joined hands with Dial 108 and Dial 102 to provide free contact-free massage to ambulance drivers inside prominent hospitals in 7 cities of Uttar Pradesh - Meerut, Ghaziabad, Agra, Kanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, Varanasi and 3 cities of Bihar - Patna, Muzzafarpur and Purnia.

Ambulance drivers worked day and night during the second wave to make sure that patients reach hospitals in time. They were also always there with the patients’ families when they are in panic and looking for emotional support. Besides the emotional pain of looking at people losing their loved once, they also go through immense physical pain in the legs, ankles, joints and back due to constantly driving around town. Keeping this in mind and to honour the ambulance drivers for their dedicated service, we set up special centres offering free massage to the drivers.

Growing as an organization means that our reliance on natural resources and our environmental footprint are likely to increase. Protecting the environment,taking actions to tackle climate change thus ensuring environmental sustainability is one of our key focus areas. Some of our efforts include programmes to protect endangered species of herbs & plants, enhancing livelihood, tree plantation drives,promotion of solar energy, water conservation and management, and generating awareness on plastic waste management within the communities.

School Support Programme

Children of today lay the foundation stone of future society. Education and access to Education, we believe, lays the foundation for their holistic and inclusive development. To promote education and to provide school children in rural India access to a better learning environment, Dabur has been supporting infrastructure development in these schools. We cover primary, middle and senior schools in the hinterland as part of this development agenda, revamping the complete infrastructure from classrooms to toilet blocks, providing desk-benches to almirahs and ceiling fans, setting up kitchen and hand-wash facilities to providing potable drinking water and undertaking Building as Learning Aid (BaLA) painting on classroom walls.

In 2021-22, we revamped 42 schools across 7 states of Jammu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Assam, benefiting 7,509 kids.

Our intent is to convert these government schools to model schools, transform their ambience and help in all-round development of schoolchildren. This also helps in not only reducing the drop-out rates among girl students in rural India but lead an overall improvement in enrolment numbers. We have already started seeing the benefits of this exercise with enrolments in the revamped schools growing by upto 20% in some cases.

This year, we also conducted an Impact Assessment study of this project by engaging a third party. The detailed Impact Assessment report can be accessed here: https://www.dabur.com/img/assets/20440-school-impact-assessment-report-school-support-programme.pdf

Success Story

Education Redux

Several government schools in the hinterland are plagued by infrastructure issue, which classrooms in a dilapidated condition or even non-existent in some cases. Lack of funds,poor maintenance and support have been the key contributors to this problem.

The Government Primary School Lower Tipra situated in the outer region of Baddi in Himachal Pradesh was one such school.

When the Dabur CSR team visited the school in 2021-22, they found that the school infrastructure was in dire need of repair with water seepage on the classroom ceiling even damaging the walls. One of the classrooms was even unsafe for students as the wall had developed cracks. As a result,the children were sitting on the ground outside the classroom. The school toilet blocks were also not usable due to poor upkeep.

Dabur assessed the need and planned to transform it into a model school. Today, this school boasts of most modern infrastructure, which is also differently abled-friendly. The school also got new toilet block, for both boys and girls. Even these toilets are disabled-friendly, fresh deskbenches for kids and also a rainwater harvesting system.

We aim to build an inclusive society by empowering marginalized communities, particularly women and adolescent girls in villages, with training on income generating skills. Our initiatives are designed to provide entrepreneurial opportunities to women from economically weaker sections of the society. We also support them with financial assistance. Some of our efforts include vocational training for women and villagers, promoting and managing Self-Help Groups for women, Beekeepers Support and Training programmes, and Livelihood Promotion programme.

Skill Development Centres

At Dabur, we believe that empowerment and autonomy of women and the overall improvement of their social status are essential ingredients for achieving sustainable development. We operate special skill development centres for women in rural India, training them on skills ranging from cutting-tailoring to beauty & make-up, and handicraft-making.

A number of women trained at our centres have established small businesses in their respective villages and have today emerged as successful social entrepreneurs. While these centres were not operational for a large part of the year due to COVID restrictions, we slowly opened the centres as the restrictions eased.

Today, we operate these Skill Development Centres in 6 districts across 4 states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Assam. A total of 337 girls and women from nearby villages were trained on various crafts during the year. At the end of 2021-22, 465 women were undergoing training in stitching-tailoring and beauty care at our centres.

Success Story

From a Trainee to a Trainer

This is the story of Meenu, a 32-year old resident of village Piyawali in Uttar Pradesh. She enrolled in our Stitching-Tailoring school to earn the craft and earn extra income for her family. After completing the 6-month course, Meenu started taking stitching jobs from her neighbours. Soon, her designs and the clothes stitched by her became popular in her village.

She then went on start a small stitching school in her house and started teaching other girls in her vicinity and earned ₹3,500 every month. From her savings, she bought herself a larger sewing machine, which not only increased her output but also reduced the time consumed for finishing her stitching assignments. As a result, her income started growing by the day.

In view of her caliber, Dabur’s CSR arm SUNDESH invited Meenu to join our extended family as an instructor to run our Cutting-Tailoring Centre. The affable didi to her students, Meenu is today the guiding light for many young girls.

Beekeepers Support Initiative

Dabur is today working with partner NGOs in involving tribal communities and farmers to take up beekeeping as an income-generating activity. The objective of this initiative is to provide these communities with an extra source of income generation while ensuring availability of quality honey in the market.

Together with our partner NGOs, we identified the target communities and beneficiaries,motivated them to get engaged in this ecofriendly activity that also helps increase crop productivity by pollination. In 2021-22, 4,675 farmers were engaged by Dabur in beekeeping.

During the year, 150 training sessions were organized for the beneficiaries in different blocks of Bihar, where they were educated on the bee-keeping practices. We also distributed bee-boxes to the community members.

We undertook similar activities in Jharkhand and Assam for capacity building of tribal beekeepers. Around 13 workshops were organised in Jharkhand and 15 in Assam, where bee-boxes were also distributed.

We have developed beekeeping resource centers at strategic locations in the project areas and provide technical assistance to communities in scientific beekeeping.

Self Help Groups

Financial Inclusion is a key part of our Women Empowerment interventions in rural India. As part of this project, we help women form Self-Help Group (SHGs) and Joint Liability Groups (JLGs), and raise funds for running small businesses. This initiative has gone a long way in raising the self-esteem of women in the hinterland.

Success Story

Ganga Self Help Group

As part of our Financial Inclusion project, Dabur organized a training programme on vermicompost production in association with Jivanti Welfare and Charitable Trust in Ghoramar, Assam. Initially, Ganga Self Help Group tried starting a small unit for vermicompost production in their backyard using the knowledge they had gained from this training programme. At the onset, the group was linked with Krishi Vigyan Kendra and they availed a minimum loan of ₹1,000 along with a vermi bed. Inspired by the income of the activity, they intensified their production and established a few more units. Last year, they sold around 75 quintals of vermicompost for ₹75,000 on a minimum investment of ₹10,000.

To appreciate their hardwork and success, the ACS, State Mission Director of Assam State Rural Livelihood Mission visited the group to learn more about their vermicomposting practice.

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Buwari Self Help Group

A member of the Buwari Self Help Group in Sonitpur, Assam, Babita Boro had been going through troubled times with the pandemic severely impacting their household income. She found out about Dabur’s initiative towards enhancing livelihood through Piggery and Goat Rearing activities. She underwent training, organized by our CSR wing Jivanti Welfare and Charitable Trust, and learned about shed construction, breed selection, breed upgradation, low cost and local feed production, concentrated feed production,disease management and market linkage. She then started a low-cost slatted floor pig rearing shed with locally available bamboo and introduced a pair of high-yielding breed called Large White Yorkshire. From this business, she has earned a profit of ₹53,000 in just 16 months.

Success Story

Kumkum’s Parlour

Kumkum had been going through trying times,trying to make ends meet with her husband’s meagre income. A resident of village Shaulana in Uttar Pradesh and a mother to 3 children, she was always fond of doing make-up and wanted to convert this love into a source of income.

With this in mind, she joined the Beautician Training course at our Skill Development Centre,managed by SUNDESH, in her village. She alongside started saving ₹100 every month from her household income and joined the Yash SHG as a member. Later, she borrowed ₹20,000 as loan at an interest rate of 2% and added some of her savings to open a Beauty Parlour-cum-Cosmetic Shop in her village.

Her training at our centre helped establish Kumkum as the preferred beautician in her village and soon she saw her household income grow. Today, she earns between ₹5,000 and ₹8,000 every month from her shop.Her enthusiasm and dedication towards her work has increased over time and she is all praises for Dabur and SUNDESH for their support: “Dabur and SUNDESH have helped turn everyone’s dreams into reality and helped them prosper.”

The game of football not only inculcates a feeling of camaraderie in people but is also a great fitness regimen in itself. It has also contributed to enriching individuals in several states. Dabur, through its CSR wing Jivanti Welfare and Charitable Trust, has been running a Football Training Centre at Dhekidol village in Sonitpur district of Assam for several years now.

The idea of this initiative is to bring together young talent and professional experts on a single platform and to nurture talent from the locality. While this centre was closed for the initial part of the year due to COVID restrictions, we reopened the centre in the latter half.

During fiscal 2021-22, a total of 49 young players (both boys and girls) got enrolled in our training programme. We also witnessed participation from our trainees in various district, state and national level football competitions. An excellent attacking sticker from one of our trainees led him to join Rajasthan FC,one of the reputed football clubs in India.

Our initiative aims to bring about social change through individual development.