By Dr. Dinesh Babu Pillai, Senior Sustainability Advisor, The ESG Institute (London) – Editorial note: This analysis is based on primary BRSR disclosures reviewed by ESG News. Dr. Pillai’s findings are his own. ESG News has independently reviewed the source data referenced herein.
India’s top IT companies have built some of the most sophisticated ESG disclosure programmes among large-cap emerging market corporates. Infosys has maintained carbon neutrality for six consecutive years. TCS has already achieved an 84% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions against its 2016 baseline. All six of India’s largest IT players — Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL Technologies, Tech Mahindra, and LTIMindtree — carry validated or in-progress Science-Based Targets and net-zero commitments ranging from 2035 to 2045.
But a comparative analysis of their most recently filed BRSR reports — including TCS’s FY2025-26 filing submitted in May and Tech Mahindra’s FY2025-26 BRSR filed this week — reveals a significant and growing gap between headline ambition and operational trajectory. Specifically: renewable energy adoption, the single most visible decarbonisation metric to institutional investors and ESG rating providers, shows a peer group range of 19% to 84.5%. That spread is not a rounding error. It is a structural divergence that will determine which companies’ net-zero timelines are credible.
The Leaders: Infosys and TCS
Infosys sets the benchmark, not just within Indian IT but among large Indian corporates broadly. Six years of carbon neutrality across Scope 1, 2, and 3 — including business travel, employee commute, and transmission and distribution losses — is a disclosure claim no domestic peer can match. Renewable energy stands at 77.7% of India operations, with 60 MW of captive solar installed and 273 suppliers engaged through CDP’s Supply Chain programme. BRSR Core KPIs are independently assured by Deloitte at reasonable assurance level — the audit-grade standard. Infosys’s target is not net-zero but carbon positivity by 2030, meaning it aims to restore more than it consumes.
TCS, the sector’s largest company by both revenue and headcount at 617,000 employees, has made the most dramatic recent progress. Its FY26 BRSR shows 84% Scope 1 and 2 reduction from the 2016 baseline — within six percentage points of its 2030 SBTi target of 90%. Renewable electricity now accounts for 84.5% of total electricity consumption. All TCS campuses operate as zero liquid discharge facilities, with 99% of treated water recycled. KPMG provides reasonable assurance on BRSR Core under ISAE 3000 Revised. The gap in TCS’s profile is its net-zero headline: a 2045 commitment that looks conservative given how close the company already is to its 2030 emissions target. The trajectory justifies a more ambitious headline.
Both companies sit in Tier 1 in this analysis — Exemplary across the full BRSR evaluation framework.
The Middle Field: Wipro and HCL Technologies
Wipro sits solidly in Tier 2, with validated SBTi targets across all three scopes, a net-zero by 2040 commitment, and a distinctive disclosure innovation — an Environmental Profit and Loss statement that quantifies nature impact in monetary terms, going beyond BRSR requirements. Gender diversity is strong at 36.6% women overall, with 146 nationalities in the workforce. The primary disclosure gap is assurance quality: Wipro remains at limited assurance on BRSR Core, a step below the reasonable assurance level that Infosys, TCS, and Tech Mahindra have now achieved. Renewable energy at approximately 55% of India operations leaves a 35 percentage point gap to the sector’s informal 90% benchmark — closeable via Power Purchase Agreements, but requiring deliberate acceleration.
HCL Technologies presents the sector’s most acute renewable energy challenge. At 19% renewable energy in FY24 — the lowest figure in the peer group against a sector average of 45–50% — HCLTech faces a 71 percentage point gap to the 90% threshold embedded in most SBTi pathway models. This is particularly striking given HCLTech’s otherwise strong trajectory: its Scope 1 and 2 reduction of 25% from the FY2020 baseline exceeded its SBTi pathway requirement by five percentage points, and it achieved the strongest energy efficiency result in the peer group with a 26% reduction in total energy consumption. HCLTech has found a path to emissions reduction through efficiency rather than renewable sourcing — but that pathway has a hard ceiling, and the renewable gap is visible to every major ESG rating provider. CDP awarded an A- in 2024; closing the renewable gap is the most direct route to the A List Infosys has held for seven consecutive years.
The Credibility Test: Tech Mahindra
Tech Mahindra occupies the most interesting position in this analysis. Its 2035 net-zero commitment is the most aggressive in the peer group — five years ahead of Wipro, HCLTech, and LTIMindtree, and ten years ahead of TCS. ESG targets are embedded not only in executive balanced scorecards but tied directly to ESOP and RSU allocation — the most direct financial incentive linkage in the sector. Board gender diversity at 40% women is the strongest among the six companies. DNV Business Assurance provides reasonable assurance on BRSR Core. These are genuine governance strengths.
The credibility tension is arithmetic. Tech Mahindra’s renewable energy stands at 26.45% in FY26, up from 1.77% in FY16 — meaningful progress over a decade. But its SBTi-validated pathway requires 90% renewable energy by FY2030. That is a 63.55 percentage point increase in four years. No Indian IT company has moved at that pace. The 2035 net-zero commitment is credible in ambition and governance — but it is entirely contingent on whether renewable PPAs, green tariffs, and onsite generation can be contracted and commissioned at a pace the sector has not yet demonstrated. ESG rating providers will be watching the FY27 renewable figure closely. It will be the most telling single data point in India’s IT ESG landscape over the next 12 months.
LTIMindtree: Context Matters
LTIMindtree’s Tier 3 classification in this framework requires context. The company was formed in November 2022 from the merger of L&T Infotech and Mindtree — two organisations with distinct ESG frameworks, reporting systems, and sustainability cultures. Year three of post-merger integration is not the moment to benchmark against companies with decade-long reporting continuity. Both predecessor companies had established sustainability programmes. The consolidated entity has a net-zero by 2040 commitment and benefits from L&T Group’s governance infrastructure. SBTi target submission is in progress. The watch indicators for the FY26 BRSR are SBTi validation status, a clean renewable energy percentage disclosure, and upgrade to reasonable assurance. A well-executed FY26 filing could move LTIMindtree to Tier 2.
Ambition vs Trajectory: Credibility Matrix (RE% vs Years to Net-Zero)
What the Data Reveals for Investors
Three cross-cutting conclusions emerge from this comparative analysis.
First, the renewable energy gap is the defining near-term ESG differentiator in Indian IT. No other BRSR Core KPI shows the same variance across the peer group, and no other KPI has a more direct line to financial performance: renewable adoption reduces energy cost exposure, lowers OPEX, and improves EBITDA margin trajectory — all metrics that show up in ROA over a three-to-five year horizon.
Second, the assurance quality divide is widening. Infosys, TCS, and Tech Mahindra have committed to reasonable assurance — the audit-grade standard increasingly expected by SEBI’s evolving framework and by SBTi validation committees. Wipro, HCLTech, and LTIMindtree remain at limited assurance. For institutional investors conducting ESG due diligence, this distinction matters for how much weight to assign disclosed KPIs.
Third, net-zero timelines need to be read alongside trajectory, not in isolation. TCS’s 2045 commitment looks conservative given 84% Scope 1 and 2 reduction already achieved. Tech Mahindra’s 2035 commitment looks ambitious given 26.45% renewable energy and the scale of the transition still required. Infosys’s 2030 carbon-positive target is the only one where ambition and trajectory are clearly aligned.
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Renewable Energy Share (%) — Current Status vs 90% Target
The BRSR framework, when applied with rigour, is not a disclosure exercise — it is an operational scorecard. The IT companies that close the renewable energy gap fastest over the next 24 months will see the most material ESG score improvement, the strongest movement in ESG index inclusion, and — through the ROA mediation pathway — the most durable equity valuation support. The gap between commitment and trajectory is where investment-grade ESG analysis begins.
Dr. Dinesh Babu Pillai is Senior Sustainability Advisor at The ESG Institute (London) and a Member of the ESG Business Institute (Singapore). His DBA research examined ESG-price sensitivity across 284 CRISIL-rated Indian companies, finding the IT sector showed the second-highest correlation (r = 0.422) after NBFCs.
Sources: Infosys Integrated Annual Report & ESG Report 2024-25; TCS BRSR FY2025-26 (filed May 15, 2026); Wipro Sustainability Report FY2024-25; HCLTech BRSR FY2024-25 (filed August 2025); Tech Mahindra ESG Report & BRSR FY2025-26 (filed June 25, 2026); LTIMindtree Sustainability Report FY2024-25.
Dr. Dinesh Babu PhD. is a member of The ESG Institute – A results-driven leader with strong business acumen, this professional combines geospatial technology expertise (LiDAR, drones/UAV, GIS, remote sensing) with proven business development experience — having led a geospatial services start-up, delivered client presentations and proposals, and expanded business networks. As a data scientist, they apply GIS, earth observation, and machine learning to forestry, ecology, and natural resource management, backed by 5 peer-reviewed publications. Core skills span project/strategic planning, predictive modeling, and spatial analysis (using ArcGIS, ERDAS, R, SAS, SPSS). They’re seeking a managerial or scientific role where they can apply their research, leadership, and business development skills to drive innovation in industry.
