Istanbul, 16 October 2020: DBL group is a large conglomerate based in Bangladesh with a strong focus on textile and apparel. Of its 36,000 employees, almost 40 percent are women while overall, 86 percent of DBL Group’s employees live at the base of the economic pyramid (BoP). DBL Group is a purpose-driven company with inclusive business initiatives for its low-income stakeholders.

To help further improve the quality of life of employees, including access to education and basic health, DBL Group undertook several initiatives such as subsidized shops for employees that provide consumer goods at discounted prices, an upskilling program for women workers and scholarships for the children of its employees.

As an inclusive business, DBL Group joined Business Call to Action’s Impact Champions Programme to understand the needs of its BoP employees and to design initiatives and services that would effectively improve their lives.

Selected BCtA member companies partake in the Impact Champions Programme to undertake impact measurement and management with an SDGs lens, where they are provided with training and hands-on support from BCtA using the Impact Lab. The Impact Lab provides an end-to-end impact management solution for inclusive businesses. It helps companies develop a Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs)-focused impact framework for data collection, analysis and reporting, and is designed to help companies drive business value while delivering impact by understanding, proving, and improving their contributions to the SDGs.

The mapping of its Impact Value Chain through the Impact Lab allowed DBL to understand better the effectiveness of its initiatives and be able to drive value for its BOP stakeholders. DBL is contributing to six distinctive outcomes through its inclusive business initiatives: Reducing the cost of living of low-income communities; Promoting health and hygiene through affordable products for women; Promoting women-led businesses through the company’s procurement practices; Improving education for children, leading to better career opportunities; Ensuring better careers for women; and Enabling women’s economic empowerment by promoting women employees to leadership positions.

“The Impact Lab gives us a new and deeper dimension in understanding our inclusive business models. This helps us evaluate ourselves and choose newer models from the vast resources of case studies available on the BCtA website,” says Mr. M. A. Jabbar, Managing Director of DBL Group.

Read about DBL Group's impact measurement and management journey by downloading the case study below.