Making A Supplier Ecosystem Measurable In Year One

Company Overview

VKC Pride is a leading Indian footwear manufacturer headquartered in Kozhikode, Kerala, established in 2000. Operating two manufacturing units at Kinalur with an installed capacity of 35,000 pairs per day, the company produces a comprehensive range of EVA, PU, PVC, rubber, and textile-based footwear, serving domestic markets Pan-India and exporting to international markets including GCC countries.

Like most manufacturers at scale, VKC’s environmental and social footprint extends well beyond its own operations into a large, diverse supplier base. The company maintains a documented vendor register of 55+ active suppliers spanning 10 Indian states, of which approximately 78% are registered MSMEs and around 24% are located within Kerala. This supply chain — fragmented, largely small-enterprise, and central to the company’s products — was both a material part of VKC’s ESG position and its least-measured one.

The Challenge

Supply-Chain ESG Made Visible

VKC had made genuine progress on its own operational sustainability. But the supplier dimension presented three structural problems that make supply-chain ESG the hardest part of any manufacturer’s programme:

Scope 3 Opacity

Value-chain emissions are the largest and least-visible part of most manufacturers’ footprint. VKC’s Scope 1 and 2 baseline was itself still in progress; its Scope 3 — which runs through dozens of suppliers — had no structured visibility at all.

A Fragmented, Mostly-MSME Base

With 55+ suppliers across 10 states and roughly 78% being MSMEs, the base had highly uneven data maturity and no standard way to report ESG practices.

Supplier Screening Flagged but Not Solved

VKC’s own assessment identified formal supplier ESG screening and contract clauses as a near-term improvement area — a gap the company recognised but did not yet have the method or bandwidth to close.

In short: the most important part of VKC’s ESG story lived in its supply chain, and it was invisible. BTS chose to take it on in year one rather than defer it.

OUR SOLUTION

A Measurable Supplier System

BTS approached the supplier ecosystem as a structured, measurable system rather than a collection of one-off vendors. Four components made assessment at scale possible:

Component	Role in the programme
Bridge — supplier data platform	A supplier-facing portal where each vendor logs in and submits foundational data: products and quantities supplied, energy use, fuel types, waste streams, water, and transport — the raw material for VKC’s Scope 3 picture.
SIM supplier framework	A seven-pillar ESG assessment spanning Environment, Social, and Governance, designed to be size- and sector-agnostic so a small MSME is judged fairly alongside a multinational.
Two-layer questionnaire	The Bridge foundational data plus a dedicated additional-questions layer capturing scorable ESG practices — policies, certifications, safety systems, targets — beyond what Scope 3 alone requires.
Transparent tiering model	A 100-point score banded into Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Committed, with gating logic that never penalises a supplier for a problem it does not have (e.g. no hazardous waste means full marks, not a zero).

The seven pillars span the three ESG dimensions:

Environment	Social	Governance
Energy & Climate	Health & Safety	Governance & Commitments
Water & Effluent	Labour & Social	Certifications, ethics,
Waste & Circularity		Reporting, climate targets
Materials & Product

EXECUTION AT SCALE

BTS ran the supplier-facing effort end to end — the exact operational burden a client wants lifted. Suppliers were onboarded to Bridge and guided through foundational data submission for Scope 3. The additional ESG questionnaire was then issued and chased to completion across the base. Responses were scored across the seven pillars using a transparent model — binary Yes/No marking for practice-based questions and graduated bands for genuinely quantitative metrics such as renewable-energy share, waste-recovery rate, and workforce indicators.

Gating logic ensured fairness: a supplier that generates no hazardous waste or no liquid effluent received full marks on those items rather than a penalty. Each supplier received a professional scorebook capturing its tier, dimension scores, product profile, and ESG highlights, and the best-performing suppliers received formal BTS Supplier Rated certificates.

RESULTS

THE ECOSYSTEM MAPPED

The assessment produced a clear, benchmarked map of VKC’s supplier ecosystem. Rather than a single pass/fail, the tiering model placed each supplier on a realistic maturity curve — from a benchmark-setting Platinum performer through to a majority of suppliers at the Committed entry tier, each with a defined pathway upward.

Tier distribution across 13 suppliers

Score band	Suppliers	What it signals
91-100	1	Benchmark-setter: mature ESG across all dimensions
75-90	2	Sustainability leader: certified systems, strong governance
60-74	1	Sustainability-ready: formal targets, structured systems
45-59	3	Sustainability-aware: foundations with a clear pathway
below 45	6	On the journey: participation and intent, roadmap defined

The spread is exactly what a real supply base looks like: a small number of large, mature suppliers setting the standard, a middle band with solid foundations, and a majority of smaller enterprises at the start of a measured journey. That honesty is the point — the map is credible precisely because it is not uniformly flattering.

RANKED ECOSYSTEM VIEW

The full ranking gives VKC a supplier-by-supplier benchmark it never previously had — usable for procurement decisions, supplier engagement, and Scope 3 attribution.

Rank	Supplier	Score	Tier
1		91	Platinum
2		83	Gold
3		78	Gold
4		64	Silver
5		58	Bronze
6		53	Bronze
7		52	Bronze
8		44	Committed
9	Evergreen Cartons	43	Committed
10		42	Committed
11		40	Committed
12		39	Committed
13	Goodlays	29	Committed

Recognising the leaders

The programme closed with VKC formally recognising and certifying its best-performing suppliers — turning what could have been a compliance exercise into a supplier-engagement moment. Certificates positioned VKC as a buyer that values and rewards sustainability performance, strengthening relationships across the base and giving suppliers a portable credential of their own.

IMPACT: STRENGTHENING VKC’s ESG POSITION

The supplier programme was never an end in itself — its purpose was to strengthen VKC’s own ESG position. It did so in three connected ways.

1. It made Scope 3 tractable in year one

Value-chain emissions are where most ESG programmes stall. Through Bridge, BTS collected the product, energy, fuel, waste, and transport data needed to begin attributing each supplier’s contribution into VKC’s Scope 3 — establishing the foundation for a baseline in the first year of consulting rather than deferring it to a later cycle.

2. It discovered practices the report could use

The ESG assessment surfaced verified, documented supplier practices — renewable-energy adoption, water recycling and effluent treatment, waste-recovery systems, management-system certifications, and occupational safety systems — that fed directly into VKC’s supply-chain and governance disclosures. Supplier data collected primarily for Scope 3 doubled as evidence for the ESG report’s supply-chain section.

3. It closed a gap VKC had itself flagged

VKC’s own assessment had identified formal supplier ESG screening as a near-term priority. The rating programme delivered exactly that: a structured, repeatable, evidence-based screening of the supplier base, converting an acknowledged gap into a demonstrable capability within the reporting year.

Scope 3 is where most ESG programmes stall. BTS made VKC’s supplier ecosystem measurable in year one — rated, benchmarked, and report-ready — and turned a flagged gap into a strength.

Key Takeaways

For a large organisation with a sizeable supplier ecosystem — or an advisory firm serving such clients — this engagement demonstrates a repeatable capability:

Supplier ESG can be industrialised. A platform (Bridge), a transparent framework (SIM), and a tiering model turn a fragmented base into a structured, comparable dataset.
Scope 3 need not wait. Supplier data collected for assessment doubles as the foundation of a Scope 3 baseline — achievable in year one, not year three.
The burden is liftable. BTS ran the supplier-facing effort end to end — onboarding, chasing, scoring, and reporting — the exact work a client or channel partner most wants to outsource.
Honest benchmarking builds engagement. A credible tier map, plus recognition for leaders, converts a compliance task into a supplier-engagement win.