विमर्श Vimarsh · Svanīti
Every Rupee of Good, Accounted For
Indian companies spent ₹34,909 crore on CSR in a single year. The law follows the rupee out of the company. Nobody follows it to the child. Introducing Heartswill and the AnandBodh Foundation, built so that every rupee and every penny of good leaves a receipt.
Nikhil Sharma · स्वनीति Svanīti · 4 November 2026 · 7 min read
I am the founder of Heartswill and of the AnandBodh Foundation. The Foundation’s registration is under way. The pilot figures here are plans, not results. Every public figure is sourced at the end.
Good should leave a receipt.
When a business pays a vendor it gets an invoice. When it pays tax it gets a challan. When it gives to the poor it usually gets a photograph of a banner and a line in the annual report. We have built the most careful systems in the world to track money that buys things. We have built almost nothing to track money that does good.
This essay introduces two things I am building to change that. Heartswill is a brand where every purchase carries a cause. The AnandBodh Foundation is the not-for-profit arm that carries the cause to the last mile. Both rest on one idea: every rupee, and every penny given from abroad, should be traceable from the hand that gives it to the person it reaches.
संख्या · What India gives
India writes corporate giving into company law. Under Section 135 of the Companies Act a company with a net worth of ₹500 crore or more, a turnover of ₹1,000 crore or more or a net profit of ₹5 crore or more must spend at least 2% of its average net profit of the last three years on CSR (Section 135).
The sums are large. In FY 2023-24, 27,188 companies spent ₹34,908.75 crore. Education alone received ₹12,134.57 crore. Maharashtra received more than any other state at ₹6,065.95 crore (National CSR Portal via The CSR Journal).
अंतराल · Where the trail goes cold
The rules are good and they have improved. Since 2021 an organisation must register on Form CSR-1 before it can take CSR money. Companies with an average CSR obligation of ₹10 crore or more, or projects of ₹1 crore or more, must commission an independent impact assessment. Administrative overheads are capped at 5% of a company’s CSR spend. Unspent money on ongoing projects must sit in a separate account (CSR Amendment Rules 2021).
All of this tracks the rupee leaving the company. Almost none of it tracks the rupee arriving. Reporting is annual and aggregated by project. Impact assessment applies only above a threshold, so most smaller projects are never checked by anyone independent. The board sees a report. The employee who championed the cause sees a newsletter. The child, if all went well, sees a pair of chappals. Nothing connects the three.
A rupee given without a receipt is a rupee that asks to be trusted.
Trust is exactly what giving in India is short of. Donors suspect leakage. Honest organisations cannot prove they are honest. Both sides lose, and the people who were meant to be helped lose most of all.
विचार · The idea: every rupee has an address
Price the good before you give it. One pair of chappals. One school kit. One meal. Each becomes a unit with a known cost. Every contribution, whether a CSR cheque of a crore or a buyer’s fifty rupees, is matched to units before it is spent.
Each unit then closes with proof: the date, the place, the count, the name of the person who handed it over and a photograph taken with consent. The line goes onto a public ledger that anyone can search by contribution, by place or by cause. A company can see exactly which children its rupees reached. A buyer can look up the line that carries their order.
The technology matters less than the discipline. If a blockchain makes the ledger harder to alter it is worth using. If it only makes the brochure sound modern it is not. A simple ledger that is honest beats a clever one that is decoration.
The Heartswill ledger is built this way. Every record is chained to the one before it by a cryptographic hash, and once a day the head of the chain is anchored to Bitcoin through OpenTimestamps. Anyone can check that no line was changed after it was written (Heartswill platform).
हार्ट्सविल · Introducing Heartswill
Heartswill is a brand I am reviving as a social-commerce arm. It sells things people want to own and writes on the tag what the margin will do. The pilot is small and deliberately so.
Take the lowest price in the first batch, ₹200. About ₹150 covers the product and its packaging. The remaining ₹50 buys one pair of chappals for a child who does not have them. A buyer who wants to do more can add ₹500 or ₹1,000 and help more children. The first product is a dandelion pendant: a flower whose seeds travel far and take root where they land.
This is not a discount wearing a halo. Cause marketing fails when the cause is a slogan and nobody can check it. Heartswill works only if every order can be followed. That is why the ledger is built before the shop.
आनंदबोध · The AnandBodh Foundation
AnandBodh means the awareness of joy. Everything I build sits under one line: I am in the business of happiness. The Foundation is that line made literal. It is the not-for-profit arm that receives the margin from Heartswill, the CSR rupee from companies and the gift from an individual, and carries each one to the last mile.
It is being registered now. Before it takes a rupee it commits to five rules.
1. Every rupee has an address. No money enters a general pool. Each contribution is matched to priced units of good before it is spent.
2. Proof at the last mile, with dignity. Every unit closes with a date, a place, a count and the name of the person who delivered it. Photographs show the handover, never poverty as a spectacle. No child’s face is published without a guardian’s consent.
3. A public ledger, updated every month. Anyone can search it. Nothing is shown only to donors.
4. Overheads in the open. What it costs to run the Foundation is published beside what it delivers, so nobody has to guess.
5. Checked by someone else. CSR-1 registration and independent audits as soon as the Foundation is eligible, and an invitation to any donor to verify a line in person.
कंपनियां · What a company gets
For a CSR head the case is practical. A per-unit ledger maps straight into the annual CSR report and makes an impact assessment easier, because the evidence already exists. Units priced in advance make spending predictable and leave less money stranded in unspent accounts. And the employees who asked for the programme can see it working.
For a board the case is reputation. In a decade when every claim is checked by someone, the company that can show where each rupee went will be believed. The one that cannot will be doubted, however much it gave.
आनंद · Why happiness needs a ledger
People give again when they can see that the first gift worked. Giving that cannot be seen is a one-time act of faith. Giving that can be seen becomes a habit. A habit across a billion people and thousands of companies is how a country lifts itself.
Happiness is not only the child who walks to school in new chappals. It is also the buyer who finds their order on the ledger and smiles, and the company that knows its two per cent did what it said. Joy multiplies when it is visible. Transparency is not paperwork around kindness. It is how kindness spreads.
मेरा दांव · My wager
By 30 June 2027 the public ledger of Heartswill and the AnandBodh Foundation will show at least 300 pairs of chappals delivered to children, each line carrying a date, a place and its proof. That is the first pilot of six products of fifty pieces each, carried all the way. If it does not, I will say so on the wager ledger.
What I am not saying
I am not saying CSR money is wasted. Most of it is spent honestly by people who care. The trouble is that honesty cannot yet prove itself.
I am not saying technology creates trust. People create trust. Technology only makes it cheaper to check.
I am not saying the Foundation has a record yet. It has rules and a pilot. The record starts with the first pair of chappals, and it will be public from that day.
Gurugram, 4 November 2026.
Sources, checked 4 November 2026. CSR spend, companies, themes and states for FY 2023-24: National CSR Portal, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, via The CSR Journal, 20 June 2025. Thresholds and the 2% rule: Section 135, Companies Act 2013, via TaxGuru. CSR-1, impact assessment, overhead cap and unspent accounts: Companies (CSR Policy) Amendment Rules 2021, via MBG Corporate Services. Ledger design: Heartswill platform. Heartswill pilot pricing and the Foundation’s rules: the author’s own plans.