What it actually is
The Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report is the mechanism SEBI uses to make India's largest listed companies disclose their environmental, social and governance performance in a structured, comparable format, rather than leaving it to whatever a company chooses to put in a voluntary annual report. It replaced the older, thinner Business Responsibility Report starting FY 2022-23, and applies to the top 1,000 listed companies by market capitalisation.
BRSR is built around nine principles, drawn from India's National Guidelines on Responsible Business Conduct (NGRBC). Each principle covers a distinct area of responsible business conduct, and every applicable company reports against all nine, every year.
The nine principles, at a glance
Ethics, transparency, accountability
Governance conduct and anti-corruption.
Safe, sustainable products
Product life cycle responsibility.
Employee wellbeing
Workforce welfare, safety, and rights.
Stakeholder interests
Responsiveness to all stakeholders, including the vulnerable.
Human rights
Respect for and promotion of human rights.
Environment
Environmental protection and restoration.
Public and regulatory policy
Responsible engagement in policy advocacy.
Inclusive growth
Equitable development, especially for underserved groups.
Customer value
Responsible engagement with consumers.
How BRSR Core changes the stakes
BRSR Core is a smaller subset of key performance indicators, pulled from across the nine principles, that carries a phased external assurance requirement, meaning an independent auditor has to verify the numbers, not just the company itself. SEBI introduced this in 2023 specifically because self-reported ESG data, without any external check, was proving unreliable at scale. Assurance started with India's largest listed companies and is expanding in phases to eventually cover the full top 1,000.
The reporting process, in sequence
Company collects data against all nine principles across the reporting year, environmental metrics, workforce data, governance disclosures.
BRSR Core KPIs, where applicable, go through independent external assurance before filing.
Full BRSR is filed as part of the company's annual report to SEBI and made public.
Investors, regulators, and the public can access and compare disclosures across companies in a standard format.
Where climate-health work fits
A climate-health diagnostic, scoring how climate stress affects access, supply chain, and workforce, produces exactly the kind of structured, verifiable data BRSR Core assurance is starting to demand, particularly under Principle 3 (employee wellbeing) and Principle 6 (environment). This is one of the few CSR-adjacent workstreams that directly strengthens a compliance filing rather than sitting separately from it.
Related in the Guide: BRSR · BRSR Core · CSR Manager guide
How BRSR relates to other frameworks
Companies that report BRSR often also reference GRI internationally, since GRI is the more globally recognised vocabulary, but the two are not interchangeable. BRSR is a specific, mandatory Indian legal filing; GRI is a voluntary global standard a company can choose to also align with.