Karur Vysya Bank Launches Sponge Park in Tambaram Under KVB Bhoomi Initiative

Karur Vysya Bank has launched a Sponge Park at Mullai Nagar in Tambaram, Chennai, in partnership with the Tambaram City Municipal Corporation under the bank's flagship environmental initiative KVB Bhoomi. The park is designed to capture and naturally filter rainwater, reduce urban flooding, and recharge groundwater in a flood-prone area.

The Sponge Park at Mullai Nagar has been developed as an integrated blue-green infrastructure project — a nature-based solution that combines water-sensitive urban design with public green space. The park captures, stores, and naturally filters rainwater through a combination of permeable surfaces, vegetation, and subsurface drainage systems. Mullai Nagar was selected as the project site because the area faces recurring urban flooding, declining groundwater levels, and seasonal waterlogging — challenges associated with rapid urbanisation and concretisation of previously absorbent land.

Karur Vysya Bank (NSE: KARURVYSYA, BSE: 590003) developed the project under KVB Bhoomi, the bank's environmental sustainability initiative, in formal partnership with the Tambaram City Municipal Corporation, which governs the jurisdiction. The public-private partnership model aligns corporate CSR investment with municipal infrastructure priorities, a structure that has gained traction in India as urban bodies seek to leverage private sector resources for climate adaptation infrastructure. The Sponge Park transforms a previously underutilised urban space into a sustainable and multifunctional public asset.

The Sponge Park initiative is a strong example of climate adaptation investment driven by a financial institution, placing Karur Vysya Bank among the growing group of Indian banks that have moved beyond tree-planting CSR activities to fund built infrastructure with measurable environmental impact. Urban flood mitigation and groundwater recharge are critical resilience priorities for Chennai, a city that has experienced severe flood events linked to climate variability. For KVB, the project strengthens its ESG credentials in environmental stewardship and community resilience — increasingly relevant factors as institutional investors and rating agencies assess bank-level sustainability performance.

Key figure — Mullai Nagar Sponge Park, Tambaram, launched June 18, 2026