Concentrators vs Sprayers: Two CSR Strategies Hiding in the Same Data

Last week’s finding was simple and stubborn.

India’s CSR spend grew roughly 3× over a decade. The average project stayed near ₹35 lakh. The typical company still clears closer to ₹12 lakh per project.

If you missed Part 1: Why India’s CSR Cheque Size Won’t Budge.

This week is about the exception — and the rule. Because the national average is not produced by one kind of company. It is produced by two different portfolio strategies sitting inside the same statute:

• Concentrators write few or moderate numbers of large project rows.
• Sprayers write many project rows at small average tickets.

Same Section 135 world. Opposite geometry.

A simple definition (so we argue about strategy, not vibes)

Using multi-year National CSR Portal company profiles (FY 2014-15 → FY 2024-25):

Concentrator

• Meaningful cumulative spend (here: roughly ₹50 crore+ across years in the data), and
• Average amount spent per project row ≥ ₹5 crore

Sprayer

• Meaningful cumulative spend (here: ₹20 crore+), and
• 80+ project rows, and
• Average per row ≤ ₹15 lakh

These are filing patterns, not moral grades. A concentrator can be shallow. A sprayer can be deeply present in communities. The portal cannot see outcomes. It can see how money is sliced.

How rare is concentration?

Among companies with at least ₹20 crore cumulative CSR spent in the dataset (~1,400 companies):

Among all companies with 15+ project rows (~11,000):

• Only a few dozen clear ₹5 crore+ average tickets
• Well over a thousand show the opposite shape: 50+ rows with averages ≤ ₹15 lakh

So when people say “CSR is big money,” they are often describing totals. When you look at ticket design, concentration is a minority sport.

That minority is exactly why the weighted national average (~₹35 lakh) sits above the median company (~₹12 lakh). A thin layer of large rows lifts the mean. The mass of filers does not live there.

What a concentrator looks like

Concentrators do not all look the same. But they share a geometry: large average row size — often ₹10 crore to ₹50 crore+ — sustained across years.

Illustrative public-filing profiles (cumulative; averages are amount spent ÷ project rows):

Numbers rounded; use them as pattern evidence, not a league table of virtue.

What concentration often means in practice

From year-by-year filings, concentrators tend to show:

1. Stable large tickets. Example pattern: ITC often lands in the ₹25–50 crore average range with roughly single-digit to low-teen project rows in a year — large programmes, not a spray of micro-lines.
2. High medians, not one lucky year. Example pattern: TCS’s year-level averages are repeatedly multi-crore (sometimes extremely high when rows are few), not a one-off spike.
3. Scale without abandoning size. Reliance and ONGC show you can have hundreds of rows and still keep a double-digit crore average. That is not “few projects only.” That is large unit economics even at volume — a hybrid we will return to.
4. Education / health / livelihoods as the flagship line. Among strict concentrators, top sectors still skew to Education and Health — same headings as everyone else. Concentration is not “secret niche sectors.” It is how big each line is written.

What a sprayer looks like

Sprayers are not “small CSR.” Many have spent tens of crores over the decade. They simply cut the pie into many slices.

Illustrative profiles:

Again: pattern, not shame.

What spraying often means in practice

1. Project count becomes the growth variable. As budgets rise, rows rise with them. Average ticket stays in a narrow band.
2. Medians live near the national “typical company.” Year after year, averages cluster around ₹5–15 lakh — the same neighbourhood as the national median story from Part 1.
3. Education and health again. Sprayers’ top sectors are also often Education and Health.

That is the uncomfortable punchline:

The sector label does not decide the strategy. The ticket design does.

You can be an “education CSR company” at ₹40 crore a row or at ₹8 lakh a row. Both file under the same heading. Only one moves a national average.

The hybrid: many rows and large tickets

There is a third shape worth naming. Some of India’s largest CSR programmes are not “5 projects only.” They run 100–400+ rows and still hold averages of ₹5–25 crore+.

Think: large conglomerates and PSUs that operate multi-state footprints without collapsing to micro-tickets. Call them scale concentrators.

They prove an important point for boards: fragmentation is a choice, not a law of large numbers. You can be big, present in many places, and still refuse the ₹10 lakh default.

Why both strategies exist (interpretation)

The data shows the split. Incentives help explain it.

Why concentrate

• Anchor programmes (institutions, multi-year missions, flagship trusts)
• Fewer implementing relationships to govern
• Brand and board narrative prefer depth
• Ability to absorb multi-crore utilisation risk

Why spray

• Local-area coverage across plants, branches, districts
• Many NGO partners, each with limited absorption capacity
• Risk spreading (“don’t put the 2% in three baskets”)
• Visibility of activity (more inaugurations than one mega outlay)
• Filing reality: one ground theme can become many state/district/partner rows

Neither is automatically “better impact.” But they are not the same strategy with different branding. If your committee says “we want depth” and your portal profile looks like 400 rows at ₹10 lakh, the filing pattern is voting against the speech.

A practical self-test (steal this for your next CSR review)

Pull your last 3–5 years of project rows. Compute:

1. A. Average ticket = total spent ÷ number of project rows
2. B. Median ticket (sort projects; pick the middle)
3. C. Project count trend vs budget trend

Then place yourself:

Barbells are common. A single ₹100 crore line next to fifty ₹5 lakh lines can create a flattering average and a messy operating model. Ask for median ticket, not only average.

What this means for the stuck national average

Part 1 asked: why won’t the average rise? Part 2’s answer is sharper:

1. True concentrators are rare (~5% of material filers at ₹5 crore+ average).
2. Spraying is common even among companies that spend serious money.
3. Sector choice doesn’t fix it — education/health host both strategies.
4. Therefore the national machine keeps adding rows, not depth per row.

The average is not waiting for better intentions. It is waiting for a different portfolio geometry at scale — and that geometry remains a minority choice.

What this is not saying

• Not “sprayers waste money.”
• Not “only TCS-style portfolios are real CSR.”
• Not “every mid-size company should force ₹10 crore projects.”

Absorption capacity, geography, and partner ecosystems matter. It is saying:

If India ever wants the national average project to rise, more capital has to move from the sprayer geometry into larger unit sizes — or the country will keep celebrating higher totals while ticket size stays frozen.

Next in the series — Part 3: The CSR Sector Ticket League — which development sectors systematically get fat cheques vs thin ones, and why “we work in education” tells you almost nothing about ticket size.

Data: National CSR Portal company-wise project filings, FY 2014-15 to FY 2024-25. Averages = amount spent ÷ project rows unless noted. Latest year may be incomplete due to filing lag. Company figures are illustrative patterns from aggregated public filings. Also on LinkedIn.