SUSTAINABILITY AS STRATEGY

IN AN INDUSTRY TALK SESSION, SATYAKAM ARYA MANAGING DIRECTOR AND CEO, DAIMLER INDIA COMMERCIAL VEHICLES SPOKE TO ASHISH BHATIA ON INTEGRATING SUSTAINABILITY INTO THE OVERALL BUSINESS STRATEGY.

- ASHISH BHATIA

Q. How does DICV integrate sustainability into its overall business strategy?

A. ESG has taken centre stage in our business strategy. To ensure every aspect of our business has the essence of ESG, we believe it is important to shape ESG in our culture, thinking and daily work management. While the principles of ESG are widely known, we think that our ESG journey must have a series of meticulous steps that will lead us to attaining our goals. Like it is in our DNA, ESG is also a longterm vision for us and whatever initiative we take, however small or big, will be seen from a long-term lens. Therefore, we follow what we call the SPUR principle – Source-Produce-UseRegenerate.

We are on a good footing with our ESG approach and execution so far. Many initiatives are planned that will help us raise our standard in this domain in the medium term. I believe our plan is wholesome and covers the important aspects that will catapult us in the right direction. In 2023, over 85 per cent of the energy consumed at our Oragadam plant was sourced from renewable energy. Our goal is to make our operations

100 per cent CO2-neutral by the end of 2025 (Scope 2) and reach Scope 1 neutrality by 2040. We are also working towards making our operations 100 per cent water self-sufficient, and we have already achieved 90 per cent of this goal in 2023, as part of Scope 2. Another challenge we have taken up is to become a paperless organisation by 2025 – this is not an easy task as we have a workforce of 10,000 personnel, including direct, indirect and contractual employees. With a great amount of success, we have eliminated single-use plastics inside our plant premises.