Anirban Ghosh
Anirban has worked with the USD 19 billion Mahindra Group since 1999 where he is currently the Group’s Chief Sustainability Officer. This role involves leading the strategy and implementation of the Group’s sustainability drive. Some of his achievements include:

Internal Evangelism and Action
• Framing Mahindra Group’s Sustainability Strategy. A Framework that includes a Sustainability definition for practicing managers, key areas of work in sustainability with flexibility for diverse businesses to choose their areas of focus. The Framework has already won multiple awards
• Building a consistent, comparable method of assessing Sustainability practices across businesses using a Sustainability Dashboard
• Creating a Rewards and Recognition ecosystem for Sustainability
• Creating a metric that includes financial returns and environmental impact for selection and prioritisation of investments in the sustainability space
• Embedding Sustainability into businesses through sustainability roadmaps, incorporating risks to businesses from climate change in the regular risk register of the company and making Sustainability one of the key processes for assessment in the Group-wide total quality management assessment program called The Mahindra Way
• Influencing key commitments by businesses
o First company in the world to commit to doubling energy productivity
o First hospitality company in the world to commit to doubling energy productivity
o First Indian company to declare a carbon price in the business
• Leading the creation of a pioneering solid waste management project to make Mahindra World City Chennai landfill free; a model that is being implemented by different municipalities in India
• Leading the organization of no waste to landfill green events such as Mahindra Blues 2017 (certified by Yale as a platinum level event)
• Leading the implementation of national award winning watershed development projects in public private partnership with the Madhya Pradesh Government leading to 3x change in per capita income in the project villages
• Helping the Mahindra Group become water positive leveraging the water harnessing at the watershed development projects and the water saving from micro-irrigation installations
• Enabling innovation through circular economy projects that generate synergy across diverse businesses
• Initiating an employee engagement platform called “Make Sustainability Personal” to promote energy efficiency practices (LED lights), water conservation methods (aerators for taps), crowd sourcing for sustainability technology ideas, etc.

External Advocacy
• Enabling Mahindra to become a founding member of the World Bank’s Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition, being a part of the Steering Committee and becoming a Co-Chair of the worldwide communications network for the program
• Enabling Mr. Anand Mahindra’s participation at the signing of the Paris Climate Accord in the UN as the sole representative of the corporate world.
• Pioneering the creation of a Sustainable Housing Leadership Consortium of key developers of India under the aegis of The World Bank to shape the spread of green buildings in India
• Building an EHS+ Center for capacity building for members of the supply chain in partnership with Institute for Sustainable Communities, USA and Symbiosis, Pune.
• Contributing in a number of sustainability leadership committees of GRI, CII, FICCI, BCCI and IMC. Leading the contribution of the organizations as Chair / Co-Chair / Member of a number of working groups.
• Nominee member on Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Council’s Global Technology Watch Group on energy efficiency.
• Enabling the publication of a white paper on renewable energy through CII
• Being an invited speaker at a number of international and national conferences including COP21 at Paris, EE Global at Washington DC, The Climate Week at New York, World Circular Economy Forum at Helsinki, World Federation of Exchanges at London, Enabling Private Sector Clean Energy Investment at Bangkok, GRI Global Conference at Amsterdam, Innovate4climate at Barcelona, World Sustainability Development Summit at Delhi, Making Global Goals Local Business (UNGC) at Delhi, UN India Business Forum at Mumbai.
• Writing a regular, syndicated column on sustainability
• Numerous op-eds and opinion pieces in national and international publications like Green Biz (USA), Huffington Post (USA), Eco-Business (Singapore), Economic Times, Times of India, Indian Express, Deccan Herald, etc.

Awards
• Anirban has been acknowledged as a “Distinguished Chief Sustainability Officer” at the Parivartan Awards 2016
• Anirban has been acknowledged as a “Thought Leader” by one of India’s premier sustainability publications, CauseBecause.
• Anirban has been awarded for Sustainability Strategy at the Parivartan Awards 2016 and at the Tiger Global Awards, Malaysia 2017
• Anirban has been recognised in a “Top 100 CSR Professionals (Global Listing)” by World CSR Day
• Anirban has been given the “India Sustainable Leadership Award” at the India Sustainability Leadership Summit and Awards

Anirban has held roles in Sales, Marketing and Strategy in the Farm Business of Mahindra. He has been the President of Mahindra USA and created strategies that has led to the expansion of Mahindra’s agriculture businesses beyond farm equipment and also the globalisation of the farm equipment business.

Anirban has served on the committees of a number of Industry Associations in India and in the USA, including being a member of the Board of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, USA. He has also been a guest lecturer at business schools in India including the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and Indian Institute of Management, Indore.

Anirban enjoys music, reading, travelling, driving, cricket and tennis and has often represented India at ‘Festival of India’ programs held overseas.