Dun & Bradstreet India launches ESG Intelligence to help Indian companies become ESG compliant

Mumbai, November 15^th, 2022: Supply chain firms with a large portfolio of third parties have to manage new levels of emerging risks, many of which are increasingly difficult to understand and gain visibility into. Further, the Securities and Exchange Board of India has now mandated the top 1,000 businesses in India by market capitalization to file a Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report (BRSR), along with their annual filings to the stock exchanges, starting with the FY 2023 financial reporting.

Dun & Bradstreet India, a leading global provider of business decisioning data and analytics, has launched a suite of solutions called D&B ESG Intelligence, to help organisations become ESG-compliant, by conducting self-assessments, as well as accessing third-party ESG reports on suppliers, vendors and other supply chain partners.

Speaking about the importance of ESG, Avinash Gupta, Managing Director and CEO – India, Dun & Bradstreet said, “Across the globe, ESG has become a mainstay of conversation in corporate boardrooms and, more importantly, in the allocation of capital. According to a Dun & Bradstreet survey highlighting top compliance and procurement challenges, 51% respondents said they needed more data to verify entities and 43% said it is difficult to identify the application of ESG guidelines when carrying out due diligence on a customer. Inefficient data usage and management are at the core of such challenges.”

Many Indian companies are still dependent on manual processes to collect internal ESG data such as water consumption, carbon emissions, workforce demographics, etc., and therefore these data resources are often housed across databases in different formats.

“Digitizing these processes and products will save time and money, expediting the speed of decision making. A 360-degree ESG intelligence solution can improve the structuring of data, offer a clear view of all business relationships and enable companies to align their ESG data to meet their ESG goals. The structured data will also help build a universal ESG framework, which all stakeholders will find beneficial,” added Gupta about how ESG intelligence can help organisations stay compliant.

Preeta Misra, Senior Director, Dun & Bradstreet India said, “D&B ESG Intelligence delivers data and analytics built from the Dun & Bradstreet Data Cloud and established sustainability standards to help companies quantify and assess the impact of their business partners' sustainability rankings on their company’s performance. This will enable compliance and procurement teams to generate insights that help strengthen their ESG goals and policies, and streamline their ESG assessment processes. Further, ESG self-reports and assessments will help MSMEs understand where they stand in their ESG journey. This will help MSMEs while integrating with the global supply chains.”

Dun & Bradstreet India’s ESG Intelligence offers:

• ESG Self-Assessment for companies to proactively update their ESG information
• ESG Report which is a comprehensive documentation of an organisation’s ESG performance
• Risk Analytics platform to upload, interact with and request data to check identify vulnerabilities in supply chains
• ESG Registered Solutions, which will offer a seal of ESG credibility that can be displayed on a company’s website

Dun & Bradstreet India has been helping MSMEs grow through knowledge creation and tailored solutions to enable them in achieving the Government of India’s vision of an AatmaNirbhar Bharat. Dun & Bradstreet India has recently signed an MoU with SIDBI to launch a quarterly report – SIDBI – Dun & Bradstreet SPeX (Sustainability Perception Index). To be released every quarter, the index will be presented as a quantitative measurement for policy makers and enablers to nudge businesses towards adopting an ESG framework in their business strategy over the coming years.

Other knowledge reports for MSMEs include:

• D&B ASSOCHAM - Small Business Confidence Index which measures the pulse of the MSME community.
• Unlocking the full potential of India’s MSMEs through prompt payments – a report by Dun & Bradstreet and Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME) with support from Omidyar Network India (ONI)
• Impact of COVID-19 on Small Businesses in India (2021)