An Aditya Birla Group Commitment 11 We have defined a Sustainable Business as one that can continue to operate within the tightening constraints of a future Sustainable World and accept that by definition a Sustainable World can only contain Sustainable Businesses. “ “ differentiating us as a Group by championing our programme and seeing the creation of sustainable business plans as an opportunity not only to manage risk, but to ensure growth. Putting systems change in place To be a credible and sustainable business leader, protecting our colleagues from harm has got to be a priority and it is a good first test of our management’s capability to deliver. We still have some distance to cover to delivering our target of Zero Harm. We are strengthening the way that accidents and fatalities are investigated and all our companies are taking more stringent preventative methods to manage risk. The Sustainable Business Framework that we have developed requires us to improve our business management systems across our complete value chains. This ensures that we align, first with international standards and then use strategic alliances to help our leaders to understand the challenges - legal, physical, technological and structural that they will face. This knowledge is vital to our sustainable business planning. To make our vision a reality we have made investments into making the right tools available to our businesses. With our Information Technology Platform, we collate Group-wide data that is shaping the understanding of our current performance and providing a vehicle through which we can make informed and meaningful decisions for directional changes. We are five years into our journey as a Group and I am pleased to report excellent progress. Our framework is complete and is based on 17 policies and associated technical and management standards that are setting expectations and guiding improvements across our Group companies. All our businesses are self-assessing and reporting their progress on improved management systems deployment and performance. Further, many are holding future proofing workshops requiring the analysis of risks and opportunities provided by the mega-trends we see affecting us as we travel towards the sustainable world of tomorrow. Imagining something different for the Group This report provides you with an insight into the progress that we have made towards our sustainable business goals and shares our thinking and that of our expert strategic stakeholders, on the distance to be traversed to meet our vision. We have defined a sustainable business as one that can continue to operate within the tightening constraints of a future sustainable world and accept that by definition a sustainable world can only contain sustainable businesses. We have set ourselves an ambitious goal. I have faith in the quality of our imagination and innovation and I look forward to the future that we are working to design and build for ourselves and for society. Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman 01 Introduction