Tatsat Chronicle Magazine

70% of India Cos Keen to Raise CSR Spending On Education, Skills in 2022: TeamLease EdTech Survey

The companies want to allocate funds for imparting vocational skills, the need of the hour to address rising unemployment, says Shantanu Rouge, Founder-CEO, TeamLease EdTech
January 14, 2022
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Photo for representation only. Photo credit: Anamul Rezwan, Pexels

Nearly 70 per cent of over 100 companies across India have expressed their intention to increase their CSR spending on education/skills in the next financial year. Most of the companies surveyed in TeamLease’s EdTech survey want to allocate funds for imparting vocational skills, which is the need of the hour to address rising unemployment.

The TeamLease EdTech survey found that companies want to spend on projects that create maximum impact.

Companies are spending most of their spending on providing employable skills to school or college dropouts (22.8 percent), women (20.4 percent) and people with disabilities (18 percent).

Shantanu Rouge, Founder and CEO, TeamLease EdTech, said, “It is good to see companies looking to increase their spending on education or skills.”

According to the TeamLease EdTech survey, 95.83 per cent of companies direct their CSR funds towards education, vocational skills and livelihood improvement, followed by 50 per cent to health, hunger, poverty and malnutrition, safe drinking water and sanitation. About 45.83 percent of the funds are also devoted to initiatives to promote gender equality, women’s empowerment, old age homes, and reducing inequality. Organisations that divide their funds across multiple sectors also dedicate a portion to education – 46 percent of respondents said they deploy more than 50 percent of their funds to skills and education. While the intentions and efforts are strong enough, companies face many challenges, especially while implementing their CSR programmes, according to the survey.

The researchers found that many organisations face relevant challenges while implementing their CSR programmes. Niti Sharma, Co-Founder and President, TeamLease EdTech, said, “Accessibility, infrastructure, deployment continue to be a concern for companies. 70 percent of companies mentioned that connecting the right candidates to the right opportunities is their biggest dilemma. Additionally, 42 per cent cited lack of infrastructure as the reason for the crisis. Even the pandemic hindered the organic implementation of CSR programmes, especially reverse migration.”

The good news is that optimism for CSR programmes for skills and education is expected to continue into 2022; 85% of companies have already improved their CSR initiatives, which is in line with the COVID impact. In addition, 80 percent of companies have already taken specific initiatives to closely monitor and measure impact, and 40 percent are spending even more to better analyse impact.