Country's leading real estate player, Ashiana Housing Ltd., also known as pioneers of senior housing in the country has been coffered upon with the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) award instituted by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).
Headquartered in Delhi, with a significant presence in NCR, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Baroda, Chennai, Jamshedpur etc, Ashiana Housing was bestowed with this honour for the unparallel social initiatives it has undertaken in Skill Training, Education and Women Empowerment across all the locations.
Sharing some of these initiatives, Vishal Gupta, Managing Director, Ashiana Housing Ltd. said, "Skill training is an important CSR programme at Ashiana Housing. We have our in-house training lab and necessary infrastructure to impart necessary skill training to unskilled workers, especially women. A large number of women labourers work with in the construction sector; however, no concerted efforts have been made to improve this women stock. At Ashiana, we had taken a lead and introduced skill training programmes for women labourers to make them skilled workers and also financially independent."
"Besides skill development, education is another priority area for Ashiana. At every location we ensure a free education facility for children of native areas. Keeping in mind this mission, we have adopted 3 government run schools in Bhiwadi and developed them as model schools at par with the best of the private schools in terms of infrastructure and teaching methodologies," he added.
Gupta further said the real aim of having a comprehensive CSR programme is to serve the society from where the enterprise was created.
"As a part of their belief system, Ashiana believes that a good company delivers excellent products and services but a great company also strives towards making the world around them, a better place to live in. Growth for Ashiana means taking everyone along, making sure every stake holder prospers and sees an improvement in their lives," he added.
From skill development and training to labour welfare, community development remains a core idea. In order to maintain the delicate ecological balance of nature, Ashiana ensures that practices like planting trees, management of solid waste and water conservation standards are strictly followed according to the government rules in all the areas where the company is managing projects.
Ashiana Housing has been a champion of the betterment of society at large and has formulated policies, not just according to the government rules but adhering to it, in letter and spirit. From having top management being actively involved to using company infrastructure and facilities, employee volunteers and also preferential purchasing from the local community, Ashiana has been involving local community groups and other local bodies such as the panchayats in their CSR activities.
The management sets aside a budget of two percent of net profit each year and a team within Ashiana has set up an independent MIS, which is used to closely monitor each step of progress in the implementation of the CSR programme.
"Our customized MIS, built for the CSR initiatives, helps us monitor activities undertaken and its progress, the completion status, costs incurred, manpower used, the budgets vis-a-vis actual expenditure and also location specific comparison sheets. Like any other core business activity, we believe in monitoring our Corporate Social Responsibility closely and dedicate as much professionalism towards it in order to combine it within our core business eco-system," added Gupta.
After beginning in 1996 and creating a formal department for CSR in 2006, Ashiana Housing came up with concrete CSR policy monitoring mechanism in 2009, created across a 5-year planning time frame and is reviewed every year by the management, to gauge efforts put into this direction. The motto of the CSR efforts has been the words of the founder, Late Om Prakash Gupta, who said, "as long as we are doing good work, we will be successful.
