Sustainability and Finance go hand-in-hand in channelising capital towards responsible businesses and infrastructure, thus strengthening climate resilience and biodiversity protection.

Sinjini De Sarkar, our next pathbreaker, ESG Officer at Kotak Alternate Asset Management Ltd, works on the firm’s sustainability strategy across the built environment, integrating ESG considerations into investment decisions to enhance long-term value.

Sinjini talks to Shyam Krishnamurthy from The Interview Portal about the significance of the 3 Ps (people, planet and profit) for every organization which would have tremendous potential in creating a positive impact on the world while still improving financial performance.

For students, the most meaningful work balances ambition with empathy. You have a key role to play in steering how this evolving field shapes up for the coming 100 years

Sinjini,  can you share your background with our young readers?

I am a Bengali, who has grown up across Bangalore and Mumbai. My formative years were spent across two schools in Mumbai, where I grew up with the vague ambition of wanting to be a ‘Scientist’. While I had no idea what I wanted to achieve as a Scientist, I always had a keen interest in understanding various life forms around us and having a part to play in the conservation of their habitats. I grew up on tons of National Geographic, Discovery Channel and History Channel documentaries on the marvellous rainforests, reading about species on Earth, along with reading many dystopian and cultural fictions like the Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, Ladies Coupe and Making a Mango Whistle. My world was shaped by these and many more key pieces of literature. I still strongly suggest everyone should consume as much literature as one can (old and new) to keep the mind open to the countless ways of living and the wonders out there in the world; which at times also could unravel the door to one’s true calling, which was the case for me.

I started a blog called “Eartheticx” when I was 16 (before being an influencer was a thing) to document my low-waste lifestyle and to create an online discussion on how personal choices create a huge bearing on our own footprint, as companies take note of shifting individual preferences. I had the privilege of connecting with individuals across the country living a zero-waste lifestyle in urban cities, which reaffirmed my already curious mind on the shift to a more conscious way of life and business.

What did you do for graduation/post graduation?

I studied Commerce in high school, and went on to study BSc Finance from NMIMS, Mumbai. While the term ‘ESG’ was still not as widely used, I was curious on the aspects of finance that can be used as a lever to drive conscious businesses. This led to my foray into sustainable finance, and my final year thesis was on the emergence of financing renewable energy in the country vs in other developed economies and what could drive rising investments in green energy in India.

I passed the Sustainability and Climate Risk (SCR) certification by GARP in 2022 and did my PG Diploma in Environmental Law and Policy from NLU, Delhi. The curriculum for both helped me assimilate the technical knowledge required in the ESG space, while working with value chain players in the Finance sector.

What were some of the key influences that led you to such an offbeat, unconventional, and unique career in Sustainable Finance?

Some of the key influencers and people have been my parents as well as the people I met in the roles I have held over the past ~5 years. My parents have been super supportive of my ambitions, even when it was just a statement of “doing business responsibly” and was not a tangible and sought after career path as today, especially after a finance degree. I have been lucky enough to meet strong mentors and peers who were as passionate as I was, and helped me in shaping and creating my pathways to a career in resilient and sustainable businesses. I have spent innumerable hours and late nights in drafting ESG due diligence reports, net-zero pathways or creating a supplier sustainability framework. 

How did you plan the steps to get into the career you wanted?

Since my early years, my thought process has always been aligned with building a career with impact. During my undergrad studies (thanks to internet), I quickly realized the power of finance as a lever to drive impactful change in the fields of environmental sustainability and social justice, as well as build the business case for sustainability as a value driver. During my second and third year of college, I interned in an equity research firm, environmental education NGO and a consumer-tech platform based in London, which helped people make a swap to a product with lower environmental footprint. While they straddled very different kinds of activities, the common theme in all has been the net impact created by the organizations and the business model. This helped me understand what the stakes are at play for stakeholders across industries, which encourages or deters decision makers to shift to a sustainable framework.

These experiences helped me join a boutique ESG consulting firm Envint based in Mumbai as a fresher. My experience here over the next 2 years working on diverse kinds of assignments across strategy, due-diligence, frameworks and reporting created the base for my career until date, with my experience of working with financial institutions on their sustainability journey. 

Envint is a sustainability consulting boutique firm, where I was one of 5 team members at the time. They grew to about 25 team members by the time I left the organization two years later. The organization and I grew together, and I believe that has been a key aspect of my career. As a young fresher in a young company, I was involved in a wide range of activities from building their website content, activating their social media, hiring candidates, to building internal productivity tools, beyond the projects themselves. Their business model is working with clients for specific sustainability related projects, ranging from longer duration ESG integration projects to 4 week turnaround projects of conducting ESG Due Diligences. Their customers typically are Indian corporates, international think tanks (research work), VC/PEs, DFIs (Development Financial Institutions; examples of DFIs – Asian Development Bank, British International Investment, International Finance Corporation etc.). I worked extensively with their BFSI clientele – VC/PEs, DFIs, NBFCs, Micro-finance. My projects/ work ranged from creating ESG Management systems for the clients as well as their investee companies (following certain rules and procedures to ingrain ESG lens in investment/ business aspects – while following investor expectations), conducting ESG Due diligence for prospective investments on behalf of investors (helps an investor understand their ESG related risks and opportunities before they invest in the company) to creating sustainability integration roadmaps for corporate clients (creating strategy + maiden BRSR reporting for a listed company – as an example). My work largely straddled across all three – sustainability + consulting  for financial institutions.

I was also a Climate Finance editor for a brief period. This opportunity to work with the GIFS (Green Indian Financial System) initiative came to me through an ex-colleague at the time. The initiative was a collaboration involving Agence Française de Développement (AFD), Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) and Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation. Being able to be a part of the launch of the initiative as well as the scope to work on the policy aspect of sustainable finance with stakeholders across established institutions in India and globally, excited me. The role was a freelance stint for three months where I drafted some of their thought pieces and created monthly cadence of content for the initiative signatories, working directly with representatives of AFD and SIDBI.

I moved to KPMG as a sustainability consultant, to work on global assignments across emerging sustainability regulations in the EU, UK, USA and UAE along with streamlining initiatives to talk the common sustainability language of frameworks such as GRI, CDP, SASB etc. This role broadened my horizon on how the globe perceives sustainability as a business agenda and the ever-evolving nature of the domain, as it starts taking place in all business discussions. 

This role with KPMG broadened my scope to working on ESG strategy for organisations on a global scale. I also worked intensively on ESG Risk ratings provided by organisations like MSCI, CDP, Morningstar etc., along with recommendations to improve them in a certain timeline. The role was more strategic, where our team’s work ended with providing recommendations based on information available on public domain and interactions. An example would be a project I was handling for a Singapore based team to align their activities with various ESG reporting frameworks, such as – GRI, SASB, TCFD, CSRD, and create an extensive excel template that would enable them to input their basic data points and auto-populate their reporting across all the KPIs of the reporting frameworks they followed. This paved the way for the organizations implementing governance processes to ensure tracking of KPIs based on which they drive their strategy to bring focused improvements on those areas first.

This role aided my shift to my present role as the ESG officer at Kotak Alternate Asset Managers. My experience of working with financial institutions, their investors, investees, and value chain partners to drive sustainability initiatives from a strategy point of view as well as implementation of the same helped me get this role. I believe my education in Finance, coupled with the SCR and the PG Diploma were instrumental to showcase subject knowledge.

How did you get your first break?

My internships in college as well as my first role as a fresher was by sending innumerous cold mails and messages to people with aligned interests on LinkedIn. I maintained an excel tracker of organisations, people, and roles I wanted to work with, their E-mail/ LinkedIn Profiles and ensured I reach out to each of them at least twice for a response. Many of them were very kind with their responses and encouraging me towards the work I wanted to do. Few of those interactions translated to interview conversations and I am very grateful to everyone who took a bet on a young fresher at that point of time.  I am a strong believer in using the platform provided by LinkedIn wisely and to connect with people to unravel opportunities that one did not even know existed. 

What were some of the challenges you faced? How did you address them?

Challenge 1: My biggest challenge was the final year of college going remote because of Covid-19. While there was some rejoicement to a more relaxed attendance requirement, this also meant that this disrupted the chances of cracking a summer internship along with navigating other barriers of virtual classes and assignments. This exacerbated the uncertainty of graduating as the ‘Covid batch’ and the dearth of opportunities for freshers in an already bad economic condition. On top of this, I was also vying for niche roles in the ESG/ Sustainability space exclusively at a time when it was not as in demand as today. While the process of cold mailing and incessant networking through LinkedIn was a tough process at the time, it also had a silver lining for me as I was able to enter the space just before the boom for similar roles came in, which helped me show existing experience and knowledge for ESG/ Sustainability roles going forward.

Challenge 2: Once I started working in sustainability consulting, I quickly realized that most of my peers came from engineering or science based backgrounds. This made sense since one cannot be expected to facilitate changes in environmental outcomes, if one did not understand the science behind it. My lack of study in scientific affairs created a friction in my ability to grasp sustainability initiatives especially focused on project execution, to understand the technology behind certain decarbonisation technologies. However, I realized while that is a setback, my knowledge of financial markets and speaking the P&L language also helped me translate sustainability outcomes to business decision makers more effectively while being able to identify the exact points to drive the concurrence required to drive business with a sustainability lens. As the years have passed, I have realized that all forms of information is available out there, and it is just the means of seeking the knowledge to learn about it. While hard skills can still be taught, it’s the soft skills that truly determine long term success.

Where do you work now? 

I presently serve as the ESG Officer for Kotak Alternate Asset Management Ltd.

What problems do you solve?

I facilitate looking at investments from a sustainability lens. This includes pre-investment screening based on various environmental, social and governance factors across legal regulations and good practices, followed in the particular industry. This is followed up with effective documentation of the investees’ commitment to following the ESG principles laid down in funding documentation, following which we monitor the active implementation of the same.

What skills are required in your role? How did you acquire the skills?

The job requires active stakeholder monitoring and project management skills, above and beyond the knowledge of the current best practices and legal regulations in the space. One should typically be well aware of MoEFCC mandates, human rights treaties, labour laws, and the responsible investment associations and frameworks to which the Company is associated with. While most of these skills were gained on the job during my consulting stint, I highly suggest being an active learner and be up to date with multi-faceted changes in these aspects happening around the world. The news is the best place to learn what matters and implement and connect.

Whats a typical day like?

A typical day would involve a lot of excel sheet trackers about the portfolio’s present status on various ESG related implementation points, creating presentations for mobilizing various teams about the relevance of sustainability for their particular function and how it fills a part of the puzzle, along with lots of calls to ensure end-to-end implementation of initiatives.

What is it you love about this job? 

I love to be able to provide the required ‘triple bottom line’ approach to investments and facilitate change up and close with companies that are bringing change and are spearheading the mission towards a responsible way to do business.

The triple bottom line (TBL) is a sustainability framework that revolves around the three P’s: people, planet and profit. By maximizing all three bottom lines, organizations are more likely to have a positive impact on the world while still improving financial performance.

I also enjoy the site-visits in interesting places I otherwise would not get a chance to visit and have human conversations with people I would otherwise not have met. One such example would be of a hospital I visited in Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan and the conversations I had with the doctors and nurses about the state of healthcare in similar places. Such interactions put a lot into perspective about the lives and struggles of people in the country.

How does your work benefit the society? 

Through my role in sustainable finance and ESG, I channelise capital towards responsible businesses and infrastructure, strengthening climate resilience and biodiversity protection. By embedding sustainability in investment decisions, I help reduce environmental risks, promote social equity, and ensure long-term value creation for communities and future generations.

Tell us an example of a specific memorable work you did that is very close to you!

I had the opportunity to lead the impact assessment for a major real estate redevelopment project in Mumbai, spanning 5,000 households and 2 million sq. ft. While the scale felt grand in terms of reshaping city skylines, the most memorable moments came from interacting with families in urban slums. Listening to their aspirations for safer homes and better infrastructure, grounded my work, reminding me that beyond frameworks and numbers, true impact lies in transforming everyday lives for the residents.

Your advice to students based on your experience?

Stay curious! Ground yourself in real world interactions, the answers are often in plain sight. The most meaningful work balances ambition with empathy, and no AI can replicate empathy.

Future Plans?

I am open to ideas. As for now, I want to enjoy and revel in my present role. In the future I hope to have a key role to play in steering how this evolving field shapes up for the coming 100 years. I also hope to go back to school in a few years to re-tap into my love for learning, maybe learn a new language and finally crack how to solve a rubik’s cube in under 30 seconds!