New Delhi, Oct. 18 -- India Inc. is displaying diverging trends in its charity: businesses overshoot their legally mandated corporate social responsibility (CSR) budget when the spending obligation is low, but struggle to deploy these funds when CSR budgets are high.

Businesses with small CSR budgets show "outsized intent" to do charity compared to their statutory obligation, while those with the largest budgets face challenges in the implementing agencies' absorption capacity, according to a study of government data by private ESG and CSR advisory firm Sattva Consulting.

The findings of the study-'CSR's next Act: How the coming decade will redefine corporate impact'-are based on an analysis of the spending pattern of over 20,000 compan...