Hetero Drugs (EcoVadis)

Client at a Glance

Hetero Drugs is a global pharmaceutical manufacturer with a large and complex supplier network spanning India, China, and other regions. As ESG expectations from regulators, customers, and global partners continued to rise, Hetero set a long-term objective to assess 100% of its 10,000+ suppliers on their ESG performance by 2030.

With a very small internal ESG team, Hetero recognised early that traditional, manual supplier assessments would not scale. To address this challenge, the company partnered with Oren to design and execute a practical, auditable, and scalable supply chain sustainability programme aligned with its long-term objectives.

The Challenge: Supplier's ESG Data Management at Large Scale

1. Severe Resource Constraint

A two-member ESG team was expected to engage with thousands of suppliers across multiple countries, languages, and time zones. Each supplier differed in ESG maturity, documentation quality, and internal ownership.

2. Procurement Misalignment

In the initial phase, ESG assessments were not embedded into core procurement processes, resulting in low prioritisation and unclear ownership across teams:

• Additional workload
• Low immediate commercial priority
• A compliance activity with unclear ownership

3. Structural Gaps in SME ESG Readiness

Engaging suppliers, particularly SMEs, revealed practical and structural challenges in how ESG requirements were understood, owned, and executed across the value chain:

• ESG requests often reached sales teams instead of EHS or compliance owners
• Many vendors struggled with basic concepts such as emissions calculations and data units
• Follow-ups frequently resulted in no response of usable data

Oren’s Solution: A Phased, Execution-Led Operating Model

Oren approached Hetero Drugs’ challenge as a managed execution programme, not merely a data collection exercise.

Phase 1: Internal Alignment Before Supplier Engagement

1. Procurement Enablement

Before engaging suppliers, Oren partnered with internal teams to reframe ESG from a compliance task into a core risk and supply-continuity priority.

We established clear, business-relevant linkages between ESG gaps and:

• Regulatory and compliance exposure
• Supply disruption and continuity risks
• Customer expectations and reputational impact

This internal alignment created ownership within procurement andoperations, laying the foundation for strong supplier engagement andhigher participation.

2. Strategic Supplier Prioritisation

Attempting to assess all 10,000+ suppliers simultaneously would have diluted focus and stalled execution. Instead, Oren applied a multi-factor prioritisation framework based on:

• Country and geopolitical risk
• Spend concentration
• Material criticality
• Supply dependency and substitutability

This approach narrowed the supplier universe to 129 critical raw-material vendors for Phase 1, ensuring depth, data quality, and meaningful risk coverage from day one.‍

Phase 2: Shifting from Passive Engagement to Active Support

The initial rollout surfaced a critical insight: email-based ESG surveys are ineffective for complex, global pharmaceutical supply chains. Training participation stalled at 20–25%, and data submissions remained inconsistent and low-quality.

Recognising that passive outreach would not deliver assurance-ready outcomes, Oren recalibrated the programme from request-driven reporting to hands-on supplier enablement.

1. Dedicated Global Vendor Helpdesk

Oren established a centralised, pharma-specific vendor helpdesk staffed by ESG professionals with deep pharmaceutical domain expertise.

• Multilingual and time-zone aligned support, including coverage for China
• Structured one-on-one support sessions for SME vendors struggling with ESG and emissions fundamentals

This direct, human-led intervention significantly improved vendor confidence, engagement, and response quality across the supply chain.

2. Removing the GHG Data Barrier for SMEs

A major bottleneck emerged: most SME suppliers lacked the budget and capability to engage external consultants for carbon accounting. To eliminate this barrier, Oren embedded a free, in-platform GHG calculator directly within the Oren Sustainability Hub (OSH).

• Enabled suppliers to independently calculate Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions
• Removed dependency on third-party tools or consultants
• Shifted the programme from compliance-driven pressure to practical, outcome-oriented enablement

This intervention materially improved data completeness and accuracy while accelerating supplier onboarding at scale.

Phase 3: Oren's AI Powered ESG Platform as the Execution Backbone

Without OSH, the program would not have scaled. The following converted the exercise into a supplier development program.

• Centralised Program Management: All vendor data, documents, follow-ups, and statuses were tracked in one system, eliminating fragmented spreadsheets and email trails.
• Correct Stakeholder Mapping: The platform enabled sales teams to route ESG assessments to the correct internal owners, improving response quality and accountability.
• AI-Supported Data Validation: What would typically require months of manual review was resolved in days with:
  • AI OCR extracted data directly from uploaded ESG documents
  • Automated checks flagged unit errors, missing values, and logical inconsistencies
• Structured Outputs: Instead of raw data, vendor scorecards were generated, peer benchmarking was applied, and practical improvement plans were created.

The Outcome: Measurable and Repeatable Results

What Actually Changed

Hetero’s supply chain ESG program was enabled through an integrated execution approach that combined:

• Proven pharmaceutical supply chain expertise from Oren.‍
• Dedicated, high-touch engagement and enablement for SME vendors
• Oren Sustainability Hub’s automated, validated, and audit-ready workflows

Together, these elements enabled the creation of a scalable and repeatable supply chain ESG framework, designed to support long-term compliance, data integrity, and continuous improvement.

Conclusion

Hetero Drugs’ supply chain ESG journey demonstrates that scale is not achieved by adding internal resources, but by designing the right execution model. By focusing on program architecture, supplier enablement, and a robust execution infrastructure, Hetero was able to move beyond fragmented efforts to a structured, repeatable approach.

With Oren acting as an extended execution arm and Oren Sustainability Hub providing the operational backbone, a complex, multi-supplier ESG program was delivered in significantly less time, with improved data integrity and minimal disruption to internal teams. The result is a scalable supply chain ESG framework that is designed not just for compliance, butfor sustained, long-term execution.

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