Know how your sustainability performance stands — before the market does
CSA As a Service – India Focus
Gain value from your sustainability reporting
Sustainability expectations are rising across international investors, customers, regulators, and internal stakeholders. BRSR is requiring India’s largest companies to report on their ESG processes and KPIs. But value is not created from reporting alone.
Value is created from having a clear external view of how your company’s ESG performance compares against peers, where gaps may exist, and which sustainability issues are most material to your stakeholders and to your company’s own long-term business resilience.
The Questions the Sustainability Leaders are asking
If your sustainability performance is improving, can you prove how it compares?
Many companies are investing in sustainability but still lack a clear external view of how their performance is perceived, how they compare with peers, and where international investors may expect stronger evidence. S&P Global’s Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) as a Service helps turn scattered ESG initiatives into a more structured, comparable, and decision-useful view of performance.
Are we ahead, behind, or simply not visible?
Without structured benchmarking, it can be difficult to know how your ESG performance compares with global industry peers and top performers.
What are international investors seeing that we are not?
International Investors and market participants use ESG data to compare companies, assess risk, manage portfolios, allocate capital, and shape engagement strategies.
Where should our team focus first?
Sustainability teams often manage multiple reporting requirements, internal stakeholders, and data owners; without a clear prioritization framework.
Are our policies, programs, and metrics meeting market expectations?
Companies may have strong practices in place, but weak or ambiguous disclosure can reduce visibility, comparability, and credibility.
Are sustainability initiatives connected to business resilience?
The CSA is designed to help companies link sustainability to strategy, align teams, uncover gaps, and turn scattered initiatives into a more coherent approach.
Are peers already using external ESG intelligence to improve?
More companies outside the index assessment universe are using CSA as a Service to benchmark proactively, strengthen market readiness, and prioritize improvement.
Leading companies are no longer waiting to be assessed. They are choosing to benchmark proactively.
The CSA is increasingly being used as a strategic performance-improvement, resilience, and market intelligence tool. Companies outside the index invited assessment universe are contracting CSA as a Service to gain structured insights, compare performance against global peers, and prepare for rising stakeholder expectations.
The CSA is industry-specific and resilience-oriented, focusing on sustainability topics that influence long-term performance, risk management, adaptability, and resilience.
Participating companies frequently state the following key motivations to engage in the CSA:
- Gaining international investor visibility1 through S&P Global’s platforms
- Learning from CSA results to help prioritize sustainability initiatives
- Enhancing reputation with internal and external stakeholders
- Strengthening resilience by linking sustainability performance to strategy, risk management, governance, and execution
Companies outside the S&P Global index invited universe are increasingly using CSA as a Service proactively.
CSA helps companies move from fragmented initiatives to a coherent sustainability strategy.
Focus your Strategy. Command your Narrative.
The CSA is a recurring annual cycle to track progress, uncover blind spots, and strengthen resilience. Translate assessment insights into stronger governance, better internal alignment, and more coherent sustainability execution.
Phase 1
Establish baseline and benchmark – the CSA uses a structured, evidence-based framework that supports peer comparability and performance tracking over time.
Phase 2
Identify Gaps and prioritize – leverage the CSA Scorecard to construct a detailed roadmap of strengths and gaps prioritizing resources where improvement will matter most.
Phase 3
Align Internal operations – The CSA’s structured questions and explanations help connect decisions across functions including finance, risk, operations, procurement, HR, legal, to connect sustainability and business strategy.
Phase 4
Strengthen Stakeholder Credibility - Translate operational performance into a clear, credible narrative that responds to growing expectations of investors, boards, and customers.
"The S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) as a service has been a valuable tool in JSW Cement’s sustainability journey. Beyond helping us benchmark our ESG performance against global peers, it has given us clear insights into areas where we need to improve and focus our efforts. Over the past three years, our score has improved from 60 (FY23) to 70 (FY24) and 86 (FY25), ultimately leading to a #1 global ranking in our sector. This continuous feedback and improvement process has strengthened investor confidence, enhanced transparency, and helped us build a stronger sustainability performance."
Monika Shrivastava
Head of Sustainability, JSW Cement
“The S&P Global CSA is both your yardstick to measure how we are doing, and our lighthouse to know how we should be. It helps us review, introspect and implement a strategy that impacts positively and creates a sustainable value for all our stakeholders.”
Sandeep Chandna
Chief Sustainability Officer, Tech Mahindra
“Embedding sustainability into corporate strategy must start at the top, with strong cross-functional coordination. Translating strategy into clear KPIs and targets is essential—and tools like the CSA have helped us drive alignment company-wide.”
Vaishali Nigam Sinha
Renew, Co-founder of ReNew and Chairperson Sustainability
“The CSA helped us to get better internal alignment, as well as a great level of reliability and credibility among all our stakeholders in all aspects of social, environmental and governance.”
Dr. Naresh Tyagi
Chief Sustainability Officer, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail
What CSA as a Service can help your company do?
How It Works
A clear process designed for corporate sustainability teams.
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1. Introductory consultation
Meet with a CSA specialist to understand the assessment scope and fit for your company (are you ready for a public score, or do you want to start with a confidential assessment).
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2. Participation setup
Your company receives guidance on the CSA process, timeline, and required internal coordination.
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3. Assessment participation
Your team completes the questionnaire on the convenient online portal with built in project management features, supported by clear instructions and CSA helpline access.
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4. Results and insights
Receive ESG performance insights, peer benchmarking, and feedback that can inform strategy, resilience, and improvement planning.
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5. Use insights internally and externally
Leverage CSA outputs to support linking sustainability and business strategy, communicate with international investors, reporting, market positioning, and cross-functional alignment.
Designed for companies that want to move from reporting to value creation
CSA as a Service may be especially relevant if your company is:
- Preparing for greater scrutiny by global investors, lenders, customers, or employees.
- Looking to benchmark ESG performance against global peers
- Seeking to improve sustainability governance, disclosure, and performance tracking
- Looking for a structured framework to Prioritize improvement initiatives
- Trying to connect sustainability more directly with strategy, risk, and business resilience
- Interested in strengthening external sustainability positioning
Improve how your ESG performance is understood by the market
S&P Global ESG Scores and CSA-based data are used by a broad range of market participants to understand corporate sustainability performance, compare companies, assess exposure to sustainability risks, and inform engagement strategies.
Over 500 clients headquartered in almost 50 countries directly subscribe to ESG Scores and ESG Raw Data as key outputs of the CSA. This group includes financial institutions managing US$58 trillion in assets, using CSA data and scores for benchmarking, portfolio management, capital allocation, and engagement strategies.
For companies, this creates a clear opportunity: improve the quality, completeness, and comparability of the information used to evaluate ESG performance.
In the 2025 CSA, 66% of participants, approximately 2,400 companies, agreed to share their public and additional disclosures provided in the CSA via the Capital IQ Pro platform and leverage S&P Global’s reach into capital markets.
Better Comparability
CSA helps translate sustainability performance into a structured, industry-specific assessment.
Better Transparency
The CSA allows companies to provide disclosures that are additional to their public reporting to ensure the resulting score is a better reflection of their true sustainability performance.
Better Strategic Insight
CSA results can help identify which ESG topics may require stronger policies, evidence, metrics, or disclosure.
Better Investor Engagement
CSA-based outputs can help companies understand the data investors may use to benchmark performance and shape engagement.
Communicate progress with greater credibility
The CSA helps companies communicate sustainability performance using a recognized, structured assessment framework. Participating companies may be able to use CSA-related outputs to support sustainability communication, including annual reports, websites, investor engagement, and social media. High performing companies may also receive recognition through S&P Global’s Sustainability Yearbook.
The CSA supports credibility by helping companies measure, manage, and communicate performance on the sustainability issues most relevant to their business and stakeholders.
- Use S&P Global branded participation assets to support internal and external ESG communication
- Strengthen the evidence base behind sustainability messaging
- Demonstrate commitment to external benchmarking and continuous improvement
- Support conversations with investors, lenders, customers, employees, and other stakeholders
- Build a more coherent narrative around sustainability, strategy, and resilience
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
"IMPORTANT LEGAL INFORMATION: We publish CSA results including Scores for companies headquartered in India on our S&P Global Sustainability Reporting Portal as well as on the S&P Global Sustainable1’s public website, with updated use terms. Following a review of the SEBI regulation on ESG Rating Providers, S&P Global has taken steps to restrict the provision of ESG scores on Indian companies within scope to users based in India for the purposes outlined by the law and associated guidance. S&P Global Sustainable1 continues to provide its S&P Global ESG Scores on Indian companies for use cases which are not within scope of the Indian regulation in line with applicable guidance, including for internal use by rated entities and for general use by users based outside of India. S&P Global remains committed to serving the Indian market through its various business offerings. https://www.spglobal.com/en/esg-statements.
Indian companies participating in the CSA will be provided access to their CSA Results including Scores via the S&P Global Sustainability Reporting Porta solely (i) for their internal reference, (ii) to reference their score on their investor relations or similar company webpage, or company social media webpages, and/or (iii) in their corporate sustainability report (or similar) and/or annual report subject to appropriate source attribution to S&P Global Sustainable1."