A Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report asks a listed company to prove, with numbers, that it runs its business responsibly. That proof is organised around nine principles. Most teams preparing their first BRSR focus on data collection and miss the deeper logic: the 9 principles of BRSR are not a list of good intentions. They are the disclosure architecture that decides what a company has to measure, report, and eventually have assured.
These principles come directly from the National Guidelines on Responsible Business Conduct (NGRBC), issued by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs in 2019. SEBI adopted them when it prescribed the BRSR format through its circular dated 10 May 2021, so the same nine ideas that guide responsible conduct also give the report its shape.
That design choice matters. Because every top-1,000 listed entity reports against the same nine principles and the same indicator set, an investor can place two companies side by side and compare their environmental and social performance on a like-for-like basis. The principles are what make BRSR data comparable rather than a collection of self-selected sustainability stories.
If you are still working out who has to file and from when, our earlier explainer on BRSR reporting eligibility and SEBI rules covers applicability in detail. This piece stays with the BRSR principles and what each one requires you to disclose.
What Are the 9 Principles of BRSR?
Each principle covers one dimension of responsible conduct, from governance and product safety through to human rights and consumer protection. Read together, the BRSR 9 principles span the full environmental, social, and governance range that investors now expect Indian issuers to report against.
Where Do the Nine Principles Sit Within the BRSR Format?
The principles do not float free of the report. They anchor two of its three sections.
Section A captures general disclosures about the entity, its products, operations, and workforce. Section B, management and process disclosures, asks whether the company has a policy for each principle and who is accountable for it. Section C, principle-wise performance disclosures, is where the numbers live: quantitative and qualitative data mapped to every one of the nine principles.
Section C then splits each principle into two tiers. Essential indicators are mandatory for every entity that files. Leadership indicators are voluntary and meant for companies that want to show maturity beyond the minimum. Across the full format there are 140 indicators, 98 essential and 42 leadership. Knowing which tier a data point belongs to tells you whether it is a compliance obligation or a reputational opportunity.
What Does Each Principle Require You to Disclose?
Reading the statement of a principle rarely tells you what to report. The disclosure requirement does. The table below summarises what each principle asks for in practice, with a representative essential indicator for each.
Read the two sections together rather than in isolation. Section B tests whether a policy exists for each principle and whether the board has approved it. Section C then asks the company to show, in figures, how that policy played out over the year. A gap between a confident Section B policy statement and thin Section C numbers is exactly the kind of inconsistency an assurer or an analyst will pick up first.
A practical point that often trips up first-time filers: Principle 6 carries the heaviest quantitative load. Emissions, energy, and water data usually need the longest lead time to collect and the tightest internal controls, because these are the numbers most likely to face third-party scrutiny.
How Do the March 2025 Amendments Change Principle-Level Disclosure?
The principles themselves are stable. What sits under them keeps moving. SEBI’s circular of 28 March 2025 (SEBI/HO/CFD/CFD-PoD-1/P/CIR/2025/42) made three changes worth flagging at the principle level.
First, Principle 6 gained a new leadership indicator on green credits, covering credits generated or procured by the company and its top value chain partners. Second, companies can now choose either assessment or assurance for BRSR Core, with assessment carried out under standards set by the Industry Standards Forum. Third, ESG disclosures for value chain partners, meaning partners individually accounting for two percent or more of purchases or sales by value, moved to a voluntary footing with deferred timelines.
The assessment-or-assurance choice is more than a labelling exercise. It gives companies a route to independent verification that does not have to sit exclusively with the audit profession, which should ease cost and capacity pressure as the phasing widens. What does not change is the expectation that BRSR Core numbers, most of them clustered under the environmental and social principles, can withstand outside review.
These changes build on the July 2023 BRSR Core circular, which introduced a phased assurance roadmap running from the top 150 entities in FY 2023-24 to the top 1,000 by FY 2026-27.
How Do the Nine Principles Map to Global Frameworks?
For companies already reporting under international standards, the principles are less foreign than they appear. BRSR was designed to sit alongside the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the SASB standards, and the recommendations of the TCFD.
A company disclosing Scope 1 and 2 emissions under Principle 6 is producing data that also feeds GRI 305 and the climate metrics required under IFRS S2. Principle 3 and Principle 5 overlap heavily with GRI’s social series and the human capital themes in IFRS S1. Principle 1 speaks to the governance disclosures that run through every major framework.
Treating the nine principles as an Indian dialect of a shared reporting language, rather than as a standalone compliance form, is what separates a report that merely complies from one that holds up to investor scrutiny.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the 9 principles of BRSR?
They are the nine NGRBC principles that SEBI built the BRSR around: ethical governance, sustainable and safe products, employee well-being, stakeholder responsiveness, human rights, environmental protection, responsible public policy, inclusive development, and responsible consumer engagement.
Are all nine principles mandatory to report?
Yes. Every entity that files must report the essential indicators under all nine principles. Leadership indicators, which sit under the same principles, are voluntary.
What is the difference between essential and leadership indicators?
Essential indicators are the mandatory minimum disclosures. Leadership indicators are additional, voluntary disclosures for companies that want to demonstrate more advanced ESG practice. The format contains 98 essential and 42 leadership indicators in total.
Which principle changed most under the March 2025 SEBI circular?
Principle 6. It gained a new leadership indicator on green credits generated or procured by the company and its top value chain partners.
Ready to Strengthen Your BRSR?
Preparing disclosures across all nine principles takes structured data collection, sound controls, and an eye on how each metric will read to assurers and investors. The team at Kalolwala & Associates works with listed entities to build BRSR reports that are accurate, comparable, and ready for third-party assessment. Get in touch with us to discuss your reporting cycle.
