Corporate Social Responsibility can never be just an added function to the business. It should be ingrained in core business operations. Taking responsibility for the impact of its activities on various stakeholders, CSR activities at RPG cover the workplace, community and environment.

The three broad focus areas of RPG Group's CSR initiatives, the 3 E's, are Education, Employability and Environment.

It is through education that the foundation of a child gets built. Even though 96% of Indians are enrolled in schools, a very small percentage of them can actually read or write by the fifth grade. While improving the quality and spread of educational institutes continue to be a key challenge for the Government, the RPG Group believes the corporate sector too needs to step in to help make a difference in its own way.

The Group has undertaken initiatives like providing regular tuition classes for wards of employees on a continuous basis. Companies have started Computer classes for BPL (Below Poverty Line) students at Palej in Gujarat and various centres in Pune & Hyderabad. Kitab Korner is a novel concept wherein a library for the underprivileged community has been set up at Karadi, Pune. The Kitab Korner is managed by the students themselves to make it participative in nature. Our employees of Zensar Technologies often visit these centres for a Story-Reading session with the students.

RPG's major programs under the 3 E's are:

Education - Akshar:

Akshar has been initiated since April 2010 in select Municipal schools of Mumbai. What started with 5 schools, 2 teachers and 260 students has now gone pan-India with 44 schools, 3,500 students and 10 teachers (direct employees) in 7 cities. This intervention focuses on spoken English proficiency and reading English text among students of government/municipal schools. The uniqueness of this program is its Fun & Learn pedagogy that enables the child to learn English without any stress and with a lot of joy. By the end of the year 2012-13 we would have covered 75 schools with over 11,000 students.

Employability - Sakhsam:

The Group has initiated a flagship technical education programme called ‘Saksham’. This six-year programme is scheduled to roll out in June 2012 in select government technical schools in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur based on the proposal and in principle acceptance by The Directorate of Vocational Education – Government of Maharashtra. The aim is to transform students into
technically qualified and skilled adults with an overall grooming and confidence to work in the manufacturing sector. more

Environment - RPG Cares

We often tend to take for granted what nature has gifted us. However, at RPG we realise the importance of the global environmental crisis, and have pledged to convert all our 20 plants into Green Facilities. All our 20 plants are now targeted to do all it takes to reduce Power and Water consumption by 30% and 50%, and bring down affluent discharge to Zero.

Towards this end, RPG celebrated the World Environment Day to create awareness about recycling wastes, reduce usage of plastic and initiate action to reduce global warming by planting 3,500 saplings with the support of the forestry department at Palej and Mundra.