Bizongo Launches ESG Scorecard for Indian Enterprises

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In a bid to enable 100,000 Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises to become ESG compliant in the next 24 months, Bizongo, a vendor digitization platform with embedded financing for brands and enterprises, has launched Bizongo Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Scorecard. This will help bolster ESG consciousness among Indian MSMEs and larger enterprises. With this, Bizongo has also become the first B2B marketplace to offer ESG-related intelligence.

The scorecard will allow MSMEs to monitor and track their compliance across various ESG components, including environmental parameters, such as energy management process/policy, policies/processes for optimum water consumption/water conservation, circular economy/recycle/reuse program, management of solid/liquid waste, and GHG emissions. 

Leveraging Bizongo’s digital vendor management platform, the scorecard will help MSMEs on the platform validate their credibility in following mandatory compliances, especially when applying for Zero Defect Zero Effect (ZED) certification. It will also simplify availing ZED benefits, such as subsidy on the cost of tech adoption, reimbursement on acquisition and installation of plant & machinery/testing equipment, and concessions in pricing/processing charges by banks, among others.

The MSME sector in India is characterized as resource intensive with 19.4 million MSMEs in the manufacturing industry consuming 25% of the total energy in the industrial sector and generating 110 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent. This consumption is expected to further increase as India continues to boost manufacturing activity.

Most MSMEs either do not track their ESG compliance or still rely on manual processes to collect internal ESG data on water consumption, workforce demographics, and code of conduct. This leads to unorganized storage of data resources across databases in different formats, which delays decision-making and ineffective tracking of ESG preparedness.

As ESG becomes the core conversation in corporate boardrooms and for the allocation of capital, it is compelling brands and enterprises to improve their sustainability performance. Also, the growing demand for a sustainable supply chain is putting pressure on SME vendors to increase resource productivity, reduce emissions, and improve their ESG score.