Tata Communications

Tata Communications advances digital inclusivity for women. Since 2015, it has been partnering with the non-profit Trickle Up on the programme Mobile Connections to Promote Women’s Economic Development (MPowered). The programme provides smartphones to women living in poverty in two states in India, as well as trains them to use the smartphones to improve their livelihoods. So far, the programme has benefited over 47,800 women. The company also discloses how the economic value it creates is distributed among its stakeholders.

Next to its MPowered programme, which provides mobile phone training to women in rural Indian states to help them improve their livelihoods, the company also runs the programme Tata Strive. This employment-linked skills development programme provides underserved Indian youths training in industry-specific trades, such as trainings to become an android app developer, solar technician, etc. In collaboration with Kaivalya Education Foundation (KEF), Tata Communications also implements the initiative A New Education Worldview, which integrates digital technology into the curriculum in 110 primary schools in Gurugram, India.

Tata Communications reports data breaches, considers data privacy its most material topic and has a group privacy policy.

Tata Communications supports open innovation by collaborating with various universities on research. It also partners with a wide range of players to foster innovation in the tech ecosystem, such as providing financial support to start-ups through its investment in the venture capital fund Jungle Ventures. Additionally, it demonstrates support for sustainable development, including using the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a reporting framework and disclosing its carbon emissions data.

Besides supporting digital opportunities for women, Tata Communications can do more to support initiatives for making digital technologies more widely available and affordable.

While the company has several digital skills programmes, it can provide greater transparency by reporting impact metrics as well as its financial and non-financial contributions to these programmes. Carrying out impact assessments for these programmes can help the company and its stakeholders better understand programme outcomes and identify areas of strengths and improvements.

Tata Communications can disclose a high-level commitment to cybersecurity and provide information on how cybersecurity is managed within the company. As a digital company, Tata Communications should also disclose and integrate a high-level commitment to child online safety in its business codes.

Little evidence was found regarding how Tata Communications endorses open, inclusive and ethical innovation. The company can better demonstrate how it contributes to open-source projects and standards, and how it supports the tech innovation ecosystem beyond its investment support for start-ups. It can also report on the number of women it employs in tech roles, and how it applies ethics in its research and development (R&D) activities.

Tata Communications commits to respecting human rights and the ILO core labour rights. It also requires its business relationships to commit to respecting the ILO core labour rights. The company has identified potential human rights risks in its own operations and in its business relationships. Moreover, Tata Communications has a grievance mechanism accessible to both workers and external stakeholders to raise human rights concerns and complaints. While the company states that it engages with stakeholders whose human rights are or may be impacted by its operations, it does not provide specific examples of how it engages with impacted individuals.

Tata Communications publicly commits to respecting worker health and safety. It also places health and safety expectations on its business relationships, although it does not monitor their performance. Further, the company discloses the proportion of its workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements. However, it lacks disclosure in relation to living wages and working hours. For example, the company does not specify that workers are not required to work more than regular and overtime hours.
In relation to workforce diversity, the company provides a breakdown of employees in different employee categories by gender. Tata Communications has not yet made a public commitment on gender equality and women’s empowerment, but it has set time-bound targets on the subject.

Tata Communications has a public commitment to protecting the personal data of all its stakeholders. Further, the company has a global tax strategy that is overseen by its board, but it does not disclose its income tax payments for individual tax jurisdictions. The company has anti-bribery and anti-corruption policies and includes relevant clauses in its business relationship contracts. It also has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints on the topic, but it does not disclose how it identifies bribery and corruption.
Although Tata Communications does not disclose its approach to lobbying and political engagement, it specifies that it does not make political contributions. Nevertheless, the company does not disclose its lobbying expenditures or require third parties to comply with its lobbying and political engagement policy.