Vendor Due Diligence that protects your business before you engage

Vendor due diligence is the process of checking a third party before you contract with them — who owns the company, whether it is financially sound, whether it complies with the law, and what its record looks like. It matters because your vendors can expose you to risks you never agreed to take on: fraud, regulatory penalties, supply disruption or reputational harm. Regulators and boards increasingly expect you to show that you looked before you signed. Doing the check afterwards is far more expensive than doing it first.

Our checks cover legal and entity verification, compliance and regulatory status, financial and auditor records, bank account and business validation, reputation and media screening, sanctions and watchlist screening, directorship and ownership, leadership and stakeholder screening, and reference and market feedback. Not every vendor needs all of them. We will help you decide which tier fits which vendor category, so you are not over-screening low-risk suppliers.

A basic entity and registration check is usually completed within a day or two. Standard due diligence with financial and ownership checks typically takes three to five working days. Enhanced due diligence involving adverse media, sanctions screening and market references generally takes longer, depending on how much public record exists. We run checks in parallel rather than in sequence, and we will give you a realistic timeline before we start rather than an optimistic one.

:Risk does not stay still after onboarding. Ownership changes, directors resign, financial position shifts and news breaks. Most organisations re-screen critical and high-risk vendors annually, and lower-risk vendors every two to three years or when the contract renews. We can also monitor on an ongoing basis and alert you when something material changes. The right rhythm depends on how much of your operation depends on that vendor.

Due diligence is an external assessment of who the vendor is and what risks they carry — usually done before you engage, and largely from records and public sources. An audit is a deeper examination of how the vendor actually operates, often on site and usually after the relationship has begun. Due diligence answers "should we work with them"; an audit answers "are they doing what they promised". Many organisations use due diligence for every vendor and reserve audits for the critical few.

Start with the basics: verify the entity on the MCA registry, confirm the GST registration is active, check the PAN, and validate the registered address and bank account. Then look at who the directors are and whether they are linked to other companies with issues. This gets you a long way, but it will not surface sanctions exposure, adverse media or financial distress. Those need broader screening, which is where a structured due diligence process helps.

At minimum: certificate of incorporation or registration, PAN, GST registration, a cancelled cheque or bank details, the registered and operating address, and details of directors or partners. For higher-risk engagements, add audited financial statements for the last two to three years, relevant licences, and insurance certificates. We will give you a checklist matched to the vendor's risk tier so you are not asking a small supplier for everything.

Yes, though the approach changes. Small proprietorships and informal vendors leave less of a public record, so we rely more on identity verification of the owner, address confirmation, bank validation and market references from people who have actually worked with them. We will be honest about what could and could not be confirmed. A clear "limited information available" is more useful to your decision than a report that implies more certainty than exists.