How CIOs are Adapting to the Challenge of Climate Change

Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), has reported that May 2025 was the wettest since 1901, with India receiving an average rainfall of 126.7 mm. Mumbai, in May 2025 received the highest amount of rain in one month, breaking a 107 year old record. The arrival of Monsoon in the financial capital was also the earliest in the last 75 years. Climate related changes and sudden climatic events like thunderstorms, flash floods are also increasing over the years.

The various sectoral regulators and government agencies like the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (IRDA), Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC), Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA), CERT-in, are also cognisant to the climate change phenomenon and keep upgrading the Business Continuity Planning-Disaster Recovery (DR) recommendations for the companies from the respective sectors.   

However, given the pace at which the climate related incidents are increasing, companies and regulators are now putting the pedal to the metal, taking concrete action to encourage enterprises in taking decisive action in improving operational resilience. 

Century Plyboards’ multi-tiered resilience strategy

At Century Plyboards India, the largest seller of plywood and veneers in India, with a presence in about 28 states, 7 union territories and 462 districts, having operational resilience is critical. 

Sandip Pradhan, VP and CIO, Century Plyboards, underlining the severity of the threat says, “Climate volatility—ranging from abnormal rainfall to heatwaves—is now a direct threat to IT infrastructure and business continuity. India’s $180 billion in monsoon-related losses (1993–2023) underscores the urgency for CIOs to make their digital ecosystems climate-resilient and future-ready.” 

“To enhance the IT Infrastructure availability at Century Plyboards and earlier at Exide Industries, we adopted a multi-tiered resilience strategy,” he adds. The company has adopted a hybrid cloud model to bring in geo-redundancy wherein the core applications have been strategically distributed between on-premise and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) to reduce reliance on single-location uptime and mitigate geo-climatic risks.

A similar approach has been adopted on the DR front, “The company’s SAP S/4HANA systems and others are protected through geo-redundant disaster recovery (DR) sites, enabled by real-time replication and automatic failover,” says Pradhan.

The physical infrastructure has been hardened. “On-prem data centres are reinforced with climate-tolerant design—high-efficiency power backup, cooling systems, and surge protection tailored for Indian climate patterns,” says Pradhan.

In cases of massive flooding, when the employees are restricted to work from home or any other location, providing decentralised work access becomes inevitable, “As monsoons and heatwaves disrupt physical access, our remote work architecture (VDI, SD-WAN, VPN) ensures business continuity with secure access from anywhere,” he says.

The company also has AI-based predictive abilities, Through predictive Infrastructure Management and AI-based monitoring, it detects environmental and technical anomalies in advance, allowing pre-emptive fixes and reducing downtime.

“These measures form the foundation of a climate-aware IT strategy, where infrastructure is not just reliable but adaptive to India's growing environmental volatility,” says Pradhan.

Jyothirlatha B, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Godrej Capital, informing about the company’s preparedness to counter any climate related disruption says, “We’ve built a resilient infrastructure designed to ensure continuous and reliable operations under any circumstance. With failover redundancy and disaster recovery in place, downtime is rare, and service stays uninterrupted. Real-time monitoring lets us catch issues early and act fast, before they escalate. Our network is backed by high bandwidth and redundant connectivity to support round-the-clock operations.”