If it’s good for planet, it’s better for business: IKEA CEO's mantra for sustainable growth

“As a fundamental principle for the future, we need to believe that being good for people and the planet is also going to be good for business,” Jesper Brodin, Global CEO at IKEA told CNBC-TV18's Shereen Bhan as he shared key insight from his extensive experience at the Swedish furniture giant.

According to him, exploitation of nature and people is a dead end for any business, while being in harmony is the road to prosperity.

“As such, in IKEA today, one of the coolest things I think we have achieved in the last decades is, since Paris Agreement, we have grown our business by almost 31%. At the same time, we have decoupled carbon by 24.3% absolute,” he said.

Speaking about climate change, he said, decarbonisation is economically the smartest thing to do. Decarbonisation is the process of eliminating the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere by transitioning to the use of low-carbon energy sources.

“I believe both governments and big companies now have understood that climate change is not something we can pass on to the next generation. It's us and it's now,” he said.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is still within reach, thanks to record growth in key clean energy technologies but it requires additional funds and increased global cooperation. The agency said that more robust and immediate action is necessary in this decade to stay on course.

This furniture retailer has a big-format store in Navi Mumbai in addition to another small-format store at Worli. Apart from Mumbai, IKEA is also present in Hyderabad and Bengaluru with its big-format stores. It is also set to open stores in Delhi-NCR, including in Gurugram in various formats.