As sustainability shifts from compliance requirement to core business strategy, leadership is being redefined across corporate India.
In this edition of People of Purpose, we speak with Ms. Apurva Rathod, Company Secretary & Chief Sustainability Officer, L&T Finance Ltd., about governance-backed impact, long-term CSR thinking, and building inclusive financial ecosystems through Digital Sakhi.
Q1. You have worked across legal, compliance, governance, and sustainability for over two decades. How has your understanding of “purpose” evolved as you’ve moved into sustainability leadership within a financial institution?
Purpose, for me, has evolved from being values-led intent to outcome-led responsibility. In sustainability leadership, purpose means consciously deploying capital, systems, and influence to create long-term value for all stakeholders, including customers, communities, and the institution, while remaining anchored in governance and prudence. At L&T Finance Ltd. (LTF), purpose is not separate from business; it is embedded in how we enable financial inclusion for our customers and communities, create strong and futuristic digital engines, ensure capability building of our employees, and work towards responsible growth.
Q2. In today’s financial sector, sustainability is often discussed alongside risk, compliance, and reputation. From your perspective, what does meaningful sustainability leadership look like beyond meeting regulatory expectations?
Meaningful sustainability leadership is proactive, not reactive. It is about being ahead of the curve and goes beyond compliance to shaping strategy, influencing behaviour, and building institutional capability on sustainability. At L&T Finance, it means integrating the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) framework into risk and business portfolios, being compliant, and designing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs that strengthen ecosystems around our business and, at the same time, taking ownership of long-term social and environmental outcomes and not just disclosures.
Q3. You operate at the intersection of governance and social impact. How do strong governance structures enable credible and scalable CSR rather than limiting it to box-ticking exercises?
Institutionalisation of strong governance ensures that CSR activities are measurable, outcome-based, and impactful. Clear oversight, defined roles, partner due diligence, and robust monitoring frameworks allow initiatives like Digital Sakhi to scale without diluting impact. The governance starts from the ground level right up to the Board / its committee. A robust governance structure gives confidence to an organization that the social good it is undertaking is indeed yielding results. We have always believed in implementing CSR programs that are aligned with sectoral and national priorities and therefore implement programs that are long-term in nature.
Q4. What systems or principles do you believe are essential to ensure accountability and transparency in long-term social initiatives, especially when outcomes may take years to fully materialise?
Our CSR approach is built on the 3S principle, which are Social Impact, Scale, and Sustainability. Based on these principles, we have developed a long-term CSR roadmap that has clear objectives, outcome-based indicators, third-party evaluations, partnerships with grassroots-level organizations, periodic evaluations, and transparent reporting. At LTF, we focus on systems that track behaviour change and livelihood outcomes over time, not just activity counts, recognising that real impact often materializes over years. The most important aspect, however, is understanding that these initiatives may take time to show results. At LTF, we fully understand this, and therefore our intervention in regions is generally for 4 years, which goes a long way in ensuring the sustainability of the initiatives.
Q5. What gap did the Digital Sakhi programme originally set out to address, and what early insights convinced you that digital and financial literacy for rural women needed a structured, long-term intervention?
Digital Sakhi was conceptualised to address the significant urban–rural digital and financial divide, particularly amongst women. Our baseline studies provided insights that knowledge of and access to digital tools, as well as financial planning, are lacking amongst rural communities, especially women. We realised that we need change agents within the community, and those too local women who could first build their own capacities and then be ready to play the role of Digital Sakhis in their communities to enable understanding, confidence, and sustained usage through continuous handholding. These insights led to our structured long-term intervention.
Q6. As Digital Sakhi has scaled over the years, how has the programme evolved based on on-ground learnings and feedback from the women it engages with?
The programme has evolved from basic digital awareness to livelihood-linked capability building and social convergence. Over the years, we have updated our modules and learning tools, used technology for developing a Digital Sakhi mobile application for recording data, started handholding and training support through local institutions, introduced entrepreneurship pathways like Digital Seva Kendras, and focused on sustainability models that allow Digital Sakhis to be independent as well as continue serving communities beyond the project lifecycle.
Q7. Beyond numbers and reach, what outcomes or moments from the programme have most clearly demonstrated its impact on livelihoods and confidence among rural women?
Impact is visible when women become local problem-solvers, helping others access pensions, insurance, credit, and livelihoods. Seeing our Digital Sakhis emerge as change agents and community leaders, entrepreneurs, and trusted financial guides has clearly demonstrated gains in confidence and economic participation. Further, we have seen that Digital Sakhis are not only a trusted partner for communities for digital and financial inclusion, but they also help in addressing local, societal issues faced by women, be it child marriage, creation of infrastructure through government schemes, etc.
Q8. Large-scale inclusion programmes inevitably face operational and social challenges. What have been some of the harder lessons from implementing Digital Sakhi at scale, and how did those shape course corrections?
From the outset, we designed this programme with scalability in mind. Our success in Maharashtra provided the initial blueprint, and our subsequent expansion across nine states allowed us to refine our model. By prioritising the continuous capacity building of Digital Sakhis and setting realistic timelines for community behavior change, we successfully adapted to diverse local contexts. However, challenges around digital trust, gender inequality when it comes to usage of digital tools, financial decision-making, and social norms required course corrections, but these hurdles only reinforced our commitment to enhance flexibility at the grassroots level. Through proactive course corrections, we ensured smooth implementation while staying true to the programme’s core mission.
Q9. How does L&T Finance assess whether a CSR initiative is creating sustained value rather than short-term outputs? What does “impact” mean in practical terms for your team?
We assess sustained value through long-term partnerships, trusting local implementing agencies, well-defined project indicators and timely tracking, inclusion of income enhancement models, durable institutional linkages and creating local ecosystem that can support the initiative. Our philosophy is to ensure that by the end of project completion, we have moved from a ‘sponsorship’ to an ‘ownership’ model of functioning. Impact for us means improvements that continue even after direct project support ends.
Q10. There is increasing conversation around moving from philanthropy-led CSR to strategy-led shared value. How does L&T Finance approach this transition in practice?
At LTF, our CSR interventions are purpose-led. As highlighted earlier, our CSR approach is guided by the 3S principle – Social Impact, Scale, and Sustainability. These principles along with our interventions of 4 years, underline our approach to value creation in society. Programmes like Digital Sakhi strengthen the financial ecosystem by building digitally and financially capable communities, delivering social impact while supporting responsible and inclusive growth aligned with our business strategy.
Q11. How do sustainability and ESG considerations influence decision-making across business platforms, particularly in balancing growth with social and environmental responsibility?
LTF’s commitment to sustainability is visible across our product offerings, focusing on inclusive growth, digital empowerment, and environmental stewardship. This includes retail lending in rural and semi-urban regions and focused products for women borrowers and farmers. In villages across India, LTF has reached first-time borrowers who often lack formal financial history. This is achieved through simplified documentation, doorstep services, and trust-based models.
Furthermore, LTF offers farmer finance to support climate-resilient agriculture, home loans for green buildings, and EV financing for clean mobility—aligning financial products with sustainable development goals. Our support for MSME borrowers helps create first-generation entrepreneurs in small towns and semi-urban India, contributing significantly to local economies, thereby balancing the growth between social and environmental responsibility.
Q12. How do your CSR and sustainability initiatives align with India’s development priorities and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and why is this alignment important for institutional impact?
At LTF, our CSR purpose extends beyond business. We are committed to being a trusted partner in India’s sustainable growth journey. Our CSR strategy focuses on four thrust areas- Digital and Financial Inclusion, Climate Impact Management, Disaster Management, and Social Inclusion.
It is designed for large-scale, sustainable, and community-led impact and are aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs). We believe that these interventions can drive larger social impact, scalability, and sustainability in outcome. Furthermore, we have embedded strong governance practices to ensure our efforts remain community-led, accountable, and effective.
Q13. In your experience, how can private financial institutions meaningfully complement public systems without duplicating efforts or working in silos?
A few years ago, getting a loan in many parts of rural India was not possible. Today, the process has become easier especially after the intervention of digital means and our CSR programs, whereby the beneficiaries are educated and linked to various government schemes that have made them socially and financially inclusive. Private institutions can strengthen last-mile delivery by building awareness, capability, and trust. At LTF, through our CSR interventions, we focus on enabling access and usage of public schemes rather than duplicating existing systems.
Q14. As sustainability expectations from institutions continue to grow, what does the next phase of CSR and ESG integration look like for L&T Finance?
We place a strong emphasis on the ‘Environment’ and ‘Social’ aspect of ESG and our CSR programs revolve around these two pillars of sustainability. We aim to launch and pilot an integrated development of a CSR model for larger and deeper impact. The next phase focuses on deeper integration of sustainability, digital architecture, climate action, and sustainable finance into core business strategy, supported by stronger data, impact measurement, integration of the value chain, and cross-functional ownership.
Q15. Finally, what advice would you offer leaders who are trying to embed sustainability into core strategy while ensuring governance, accountability, and long-term impact remain central?
Anchor sustainability in governance, align it with business relevance, and commit to the long term. Meaningful impact requires patience, accountability, and a shift from short-term outputs to durable and lasting outcomes. Sustainability is a long-term investment, and this is the right time to invest in securing a better tomorrow.
