A company's annual accounts say how much it earned and what it owns. They say little about how much water its plants draw from a stressed aquifer, how many workers were injured last year, or how much of its electricity came from coal. Investors, lenders, buyers, regulators and the communities near a factory all have reasons to want those numbers, and before 2012 Indian listed companies had no obligation to publish them in a common format.

SEBI's own statement of purpose names investors first: the disclosures are meant to help them "make better investment decisions" and to let companies "engage more meaningfully with their stakeholders" (circular of 10 May 2021, para 5).

Three points follow from the text. The BRSR is part of the annual report, so it is published once a year with the accounts. The format is set by SEBI through circulars, which is why changes arrive by circular. And it covers environmental, social and governance matters together, using the nine principles of the NGRBC as its skeleton.

Until the end of 2024, market capitalisation for this purpose was taken as on 31 March. That explanation was omitted with effect from 31 December 2024. Under Regulation 3(2), the stock exchanges now rank listed entities "on the basis of their average market capitalisation from 1st July to 31st December" of each year, and the first such list was drawn up as on 31 December 2024.

Cross-referencing saves duplicated work. It also means a reader sometimes has to open a second document to find a figure. If a BRSR cell says "refer to the sustainability report, page 54", go there and check that the figure covers the same boundary and the same year.

Illustrative figures Use the rules on the previous slides. The BRSR Core timetable is in Section 04: top 150 from FY 2023-24, top 250 from FY 2024-25, top 500 from FY 2025-26, top 1,000 from FY 2026-27.

The table under the question asks, for each issue, whether it is a risk or an opportunity (R/O), the reason it was identified, the company's approach, and its financial implications, positive or negative. The format does not say whether the company should judge materiality by its effect on the business, its effect on people and the environment, or both. Section 09 returns to this.

Section B is a grid with one column for each of the nine principles. Its first group of questions, "Policy and management processes", asks whether the company's policies cover each principle and its core elements, whether the Board approved them, whether the policies extend to the value chain, which national and international standards the company follows, and what specific commitments, goals and targets it has set.

Section C takes each principle in turn and asks a set of essential indicators followed by leadership indicators. Most of the figures that analysts, journalists and rating agencies quote come from here: energy and emissions under Principle 6, safety and wages under Principles 3 and 5, sourcing from small producers under Principle 8, customer complaints and data breaches under Principle 9, and payment days and related-party concentration under Principle 1.

BRSR Core is a subset of the BRSR. It picks the figures SEBI considers most important, defines how each is to be measured, and requires an outside provider to assess or assure them on a timetable. The same circular added new indicators, among them "job creation in small towns, open-ness of business, gross wages paid to women", and introduced intensity ratios "based on revenue adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)" for better global comparability.

The 28 March 2025 circular left this table unchanged; it is the same in the LODR Master Circular updated on 30 January 2026. What changed was the obligation's wording, from "mandatorily undertake reasonable assurance of the BRSR Core" (2023, para 3.4.2) to "mandatorily undertake assessment or assurance of the BRSR Core" (2025, para 2.4.2).

The 2025 circular names no single profession. It places the burden on the Board, which "shall ensure that the assessment or assurance provider of the BRSR Core has the necessary expertise". It also sets an independence rule: the provider and its associates must not "sell its products or provide any non-audit / non-assessment / non-assurance related service including consulting services, to the listed entity or its group entities".

BRSR Principle 6 asks every covered company for total Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions in tonnes of CO2 equivalent, and their intensity per rupee of turnover, per rupee adjusted for PPP, and optionally per unit of output. Scope 3 emissions and their intensity are a leadership indicator. Scope 1 and 2 are also BRSR Core attribute 1, so they must be independently checked on the timetable.

The weighted average divides "the absolute CO2 emissions of all power stations by the total net generation", including renewable generation and grid-connected captive plants. The ISF note tells companies to "use the latest applicable CEA-published grid emission factor". Version 21 also revised some earlier years after adding actual captive-plant data, so use the current table for past years too.

Where a company operates in markets that offer contractual instruments for electricity, the Guidance says it "shall report scope 2 emissions in two ways": location-based and market-based. The market-based figure can fall sharply when a company buys renewable power through contracts, while the location-based figure stays tied to the grid's average.

Total energy consumed is A+B+C+D+E+F. The format asks for energy intensity per rupee of turnover, per rupee adjusted for PPP, and optionally per unit of output. The guidance note says the data "shall be reported in terms of Joules or multiples such as Giga Joules", and that conversion factors must be applied consistently and disclosed.

Principle 6, essential indicator 2 asks whether any of the company's sites are "designated consumers" under the Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) scheme of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, and if so, whether their targets were met and what was done if they were not. PAT sets specific energy consumption targets for energy-intensive plants under the National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency.

Section A, Part IV counts people in four groups: permanent employees, other-than-permanent employees, permanent workers and other-than-permanent workers, each split by gender, with separate counts for differently abled people. Many safety and wage figures in Section C are reported for "employees" and "workers" separately.

Principle 5 asks, among other things, for complaints filed and resolved under the POSH Act, the share of employees paid at least the minimum wage, median remuneration by gender, and training on human rights. BRSR Core attribute 6 includes the POSH complaints figure.

A company's suppliers produce much of its Scope 3 emissions and employ many of the workers whose safety a buyer may be asked about. Value chain disclosures are the BRSR's way of reaching past the company's own gate. They are now voluntary, so many companies will not make them, and those that do may cover only their largest partners.

The Global Reporting Initiative publishes the most widely used sustainability reporting standards. Its Universal Standards 2021 (GRI 1 Foundation, GRI 2 General Disclosures and GRI 3 Material Topics) are "in effect for reporting from 1 January 2023". GRI is built around a company's impacts on the economy, environment and people.

The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), part of the IFRS Foundation, issued IFRS S1 (general requirements) and IFRS S2 (climate-related disclosures) in June 2023, effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2024, where a jurisdiction adopts them. Amendments to IFRS S2 on greenhouse gas emissions were issued in December 2025.

These five questions take a few minutes and catch most of the problems a non-specialist can catch. They do not require recalculating anything.

Read together, the figures raise three questions a reader would put to Company X: why women, who are a quarter of the workforce, receive 14% of wages; whether the safety rate covers contract workers; and how many of its MSME suppliers wait longer than 45 days to be paid.