Arvind Products Ltd.

Arvind Products Ltd.

Sales (2007-2008) =Rs.440 crores (rounded off)

Net profit after tax =Rs.3 crores (rounded off)

CSR Budget: Not available

Karmayog 2008 CSR Rating: 2/ 5

See Karmayog Comments below

CSR activities:

Arvind Products Ltd. is a flagship company of Lalbhai Group

All CSR activities are taken up by the Lalbhai Foundation for the Group.

Sharda Trust

Established in 1995 with the support of Arvind Limited, �Strategic Help Alliance for Relief to Distressed Areas� (SHARDA), its purpose is to help the urban poor in improving their quality of life.
Trust joined hands with the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation to upgrade the physical environment and living conditions in a slum pocket called �Sanjay Nagar.� The Municipal Corporation assigned the task of implementation to this Trust, which completed the project within time and budget. On 7 August 1998, the United Nations Centre for Human Settlement (UNCHS) included the Sanjay Nagar project in its “100 Best Practices Global List”.
Subsequently, the Trust has taken several initiatives like providing secondary and tertiary healthcare to the urban poor through networking with prominent hospitals in the city. About eight hundred patients have benefited and approximately Rs.13 lakh have been spent on this activity.
The Trust collaborated with the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Gandhinagar, and helped the urban poor to train in the area of sewing machine operation. The Trust also organized placement activity with the local garment manufacturers and has so far trained and placed over 300 persons in Ahmedabad.
Spoken English and basic mathematics for the youth belonging to poor families and providing them with computer skills is the other activity that the Trust has undertaken in collaboration with the Chandraprasad Desai Memorial Foundation. The Trust is poised for a rapid expansion in all its projects.

Narottam Lalbhai Rural Development Fund ( NLRDF)

Vocational Programmes for rural poor -The Khedbrahma taluka of Gujarat�s Sabarkantha district is a tribal and a hilly area. Except agriculture, there are no industries that can provide promising career opportunities for the rural youth who are poorly educated and have no marketable skills. Consequently, unemployment is a major problem facing the youth of that region. The irony is that Arvind Limited located in nearby Ahmedabad, is desperately looking for young persons with minimum educational qualifications to work in their garment factory. In this situation, NLRDF saw a unique opportunity to help the poor youth in the Khedbrahma taluka. NLRDF�s team requested the Arvind Limited to provide training for about sixty youth from the Taluka for working in the company�s garment factory. The company readily agreed to do so. Now these sixty young persons are working in the company�s garment factory and earning a regular monthly income. More than earning a regular income, these young persons have found a direction for improving their career. If this experiment succeeds, the NLRDF would get more young persons from nearby rural areas to work in the city�s emerging garment industry.

Upgrading the infrastructure in a rural primary school –The existing class room of a school in a village is old unsuitable for teaching the school�s children studying in classes I, II, III, and IV In the monsoon, rain water leaks into the school�s building. Also, the school is short of space for teaching the growing number of children in the area. To meet this crying need for a better infrastructure, the NLRDF constructed in a nearby primary school, a room with RCC structure. In addition, the NLRDF provided the minimum teaching material and equipment that a school needs. After completion of the classroom, the NLRDF handed over to the school the better equipped classroom.

Helping the rural poor in improving the yields in their farms -Non availability of good quality seeds and poor irrigation facilities impede the productivity of agriculture in rural India. Realising this need, the NLDF team provided five kilograms of improved Sahara Brand Maize Seeds to each of the sixty-six families in the Tandalia village. The NLDF team purchased the seed from Khedbrahma Kharid Vechan Sangh, Khedbrahma. Similarly, the team supplied two and half kilograms of the improved Mug seed to each of the thirty-two farmers who possessed better irrigation facilities. These improved seed would yield better-quality and higher yield for the farmers and require the farmers to use less quantity of water in their farms. Consequently, the productivity of their farms would improve. This experience of using better seeds would motivate the farmers to use good quality seeds in the future. In addition, the team supplied vegetable-seeds to the Self Help Groups of women in the area for their kitchen gardens. The team collected the samples from the Horticulture department, Himmatnagar. The Khedbrahma taluka of Gujarat�s Sabarkantha district, as we have pointed out above, is a hilly area. Consequently, the land of the area is extremely uneven and therefore, the rain water does not percolate. Obviously, the water table in the region is very low leading to poor crop yields. To remedy the situation, we decided to reduce the slope of the land. For doing so, we �cut and filled� the slopes, making the topography of the land less uneven. We have carried out this activity where twenty-seven farmers had their farms. We do hope that this measure would improve the crop yield for these twenty-seven farmers giving them higher income from their land.

Providing economic assistance to widows who have little or no help from families.

Training to leaders of sakhi mandals-Many taluka panchayats have formed self help groups of women. Formal methods of accounting is taught to atleast 400 women.

Source: www.arvindmills.com/corporate_responsibility/ahmedabad_edu.htm

www.arvindmills.com/investor/annual_financial_reporting.htm (Annual Report of �07-�08)

Karmayog Comments: No information available last year on CSR initiatives.

Contact Information:

Arvind Products Ltd.

Arvind Mills Premises Railwaypura Post

Ahmedabad-380025

Gujarat

Phone no. : 79-22203030

Fax : : 79-22201270

Email : prakash.makwana@arvindmills.com

Website : http://www.arvindmills.com/home.htm

Industry Sector: Textiles-Cotton yarn

Products / Services: Cotton yarn

Other locations of factories / offices: 7 factories/ plants in Gujarat

Previous year�s CSR activities & rating: