CSR Amendment 2021: Goodera Aims to Make it Easier for Companies

The company has launched the Goodera Compliance Module, Goodera Impact Assessment Module, and Goodera Partner Support Module. These offerings combine technology with rich domain expertise and a plethora of services that will help companies align and upgrade their CSR policy, programs, and processes to be compliant with the new amendments.

The new amendments to Section 135 of the Companies Act 2013 have been approved as of January 22, 2021. The amendments have added stringent responsibilities on corporates to ensure that they plan, implement, and assess their CSR programs with more rigor. The amendments have affected all aspects of the CSR lifecycle from design, implementation & monitoring to reporting of the CSR activities undertaken.

“With the new regulations in CSR laws in India, I foresee great potential for technology and Goodera to drive social development and impact in the country. Focus on mandatory fund allocation for companies will drastically improve project results, positively impact compliance, and help companies become more socially driven. At Goodera, we welcome these changes. Our solution will help companies not only be compliant but also help them measure and report impact at scale.” - Abhishek Humbad, CEO and Founder of Goodera

The Goodera Compliance Module:

Goodera’s team will assist corporates in the creation of an annual action plan with a separate budget and finance module for planning annual allocations, disbursements, invoicing, unspent amounts, and surplus budgets. It also helps capture direct, indirect costs and CAPEX, OPEX for each project, and aggregates data for reporting convenience. The solution also helps expedite CFO approvals through its uniquely designed workflows.

The Goodera Impact Assessment module for corporates:

Goodera has appended its technology stack to sell technology-enabled Impact Assessments for clients. This will include access to their web and mobile application, and integrations of IVRS with their CSR portal to undertake detailed impact assessment, provide beneficiary profiling, understand project insights, and demonstrate Impact. This end-to-end solution offers:

• Insights from existing data and the baseline report to plan effective field assessments,
• Automated and standardized forms determined by logical framework and theory of change modeling to ease survey and data collection, and
• Detailed reports underpinned by insightful impact dashboards.

The Goodera Partner Support Module:

One of the major action items for NGOs will be to get new registrations completed within a defined timeline. The Partner Support Module supports NGOs by providing the necessary support for submission of the e-form CSR-1 on the MCA portal and to obtain a unique CSR Registration number. The new offerings allow companies to further alleviate the challenges and hurdles faced by the CSR community.

With the modules designed to be extremely secure with an end-to-end cloud-based infrastructure, Goodera is one of the only ISO 27001 certified companies in the ecosystem.

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