With swift rise of digitalisation, governments worldwide are incorporating and introducing technology into administrative processes and therefore, are quickly adopting e-governance. In fast-expanding and booming economies, such as India, e-governance has become essential. Following this, the Indian government launched the ‘Government e-Marketplace’ to offer procurement services in a convenient, efficient, and transparent manner. The platform is likely to radically change the government procurement process by consolidating all procurement needs of different departments into a single platform to offer economies of scale, better price discovery and best practices.

As per estimates, India spends 20% of the GDP on public procurement of goods and services annually for government or state-owned enterprises, and faced numerous

pitfalls owing to the lack of transparency in the previous buying process, which was not favourable for small and midsized players. Moreover, purchases in small quantities lose the benefits of economies of scale and are vulnerable to malpractices as it is a challenge to monitor small transactions.

To deal with such challenges, the Indian government launched the Government e- Marketplace (GeM) in August 2016. GeM is an exclusive end-to-end online solution that

facilitates procurement of common use goods & services for all government departments/organisations/PSUs. It is managed by GeM Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), a 100% government-owned, Section 8 Company under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Through the platform, the government aimed to create transparency, boost efficiency, and centralise the procurement process, while also enabling savings for the exchequer. In addition, it offers tools such as e-bidding, reverse e-auction, and demand aggregation to help ensure that users get the most bang for their buck.

Read the IBEF Case Study on GeM.