Government e Marketplace (GeM) has attained an annual procurement of INR 1 Lakh crore within FY 2021-22. This represents a 160% growth compared to last FY. Addressing media on the occasion, Shri Prashant Kumar Singh, CEO, GeM said that since inception the cumulative Gross Merchandize Value (GMV) reached INR 1 Lakh crore over 4 and half years, on 23rd March 2021, whereas the GMV of GeM in the current Financial Year surpassed Rs. 1 lakh crore (Ts. 1 trillion) in less than a year. This represents a 160% growth compared to last FY. Earlier in the day, the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi had tweeted about this accomplishment.

Shri Singh added that the portal had transformed public procurement in India by driving its three pillars viz. inclusion, usability and transparency and efficiency and cost saving. The number of orders has also surpassed 31.5 Lakh in the current financial year with a growth at the rate of 22%. In a short span of 5 years, GeM has become one of the biggest government e-procurement platforms in the world.

Referring to the share of Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs), Shri Singh said that approximately Rs. 43,000 Crore worth procurement was done by CPSEs (~43% of total GMV) on GeM, showing an approximate growth of 508% as compared to last FY. He also asserted that States continued to be an important stakeholder with approx. 30% contribution to total GMV.

Highlighting the role played by GeM in ushering in inclusion in government procurement, Shri Singh said that GeM has taken a host of steps to onboard products of Self-Help Groups (SHGs), tribal communities, craftsmen, weavers, and MSMEs. 57% of the total business on GeM has come through the MSME units and over 6% has been contributed by female entrepreneurs. It may be noted that the number of women sellers and entrepreneurs on GeM has grown 6 times in a year. 

It may be noted that procurement from MSEs is at 57% of the total GMV currently with a growth of 143% compared to last FY. There is a 15% increase in Buyer onboarding compared to last FY and there is a 187% increase in Seller onboarding compared to last FY. There is also a 44% increase in the number of Services compared to last FY with a 25% contribution in the total GMV (Rs. 25,000 Crore)

GeM is an online platform for public procurement in India which was envisaged by the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi ji. The initiative was launched on August 9, 2016 by Ministry of Commerce and Industry, GoI, with an objective to create an open and transparent procurement platform for government buyers. Created in a record time of 5 months, GeM facilitates online procurement of common use Goods and Services.

According to an independent assessment made by the World Bank, average savings for buyers in Government e Marketplace portal is about 9.75% on the median price. Since inception GeM has shown impressive growth year on year with better prices, thus helping the state exchequer save substantial money. In an analysis in the Economic Survey 2021-22, cost comparison of various commodities on GeM with those of popular online platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart showed that GeM prices were 9.5% lower. 10 out of 22 commodities in the sample were cheaper on the GeM portal as compared to other platforms.

New features and initiatives launched in GeM Covid 19 Oxygen drive was carried out during the Covid crisis to onboard suppliers of compressed medical oxygen gas cylinders on GeM. Total 250 Covid-19 medical categories are available on GeM; over 4.73 Lakh orders were placed through the same since March 2020.

GeM is integrating with Panchayati Raj Institutions to allow online buying and selling by the Panchayats at the grassroot level. The pilot in Gurgaon district panchayats has been successfully completed. Gem is in an advanced stage of integration with IndiaPost for extending logistics services at the grassroot level.

GeM SAHAY is an initiative to facilitate small sellers to avail credit financing from various integrated Lenders for the Orders received on GeM Portal.The Forward auction module has been launched facilitating government Auctioneers to auction assets using multiple auction modes and monitor the complete selling life cycle of their assets.

GeM platform supports advanced analytics framework to identify anomalous behaviour and transactions, market intelligence, demand/price forecasting and procurement planning/monitoring. GeM now has integration with 24 CPSEs ERP systems for post order information exchange. In total over 3 Lakh orders worth Rs. 42,000 Crore were exchanged via the integration.

GeM has Implemented Natural Language Processing based search to understand the users’ intent thereby allowing the display of relevant and more accurate search results when they search for products or services on GeM.

GeM has enabled the Buyback mechanism through which the buyer will be able to float a bid to replace old products with new ones and get some additional discount/buyback on the old products. GeM has enabled schedule wise evaluation for BoQ bids. The Buyers can now publish and evaluate item-wise, group-wise, consignee-wise for the BoQ Bids.

To ensure that business growth is supported by the platform with reliability and performance, GeM has implemented various improvements like efficient caching, optimizing active storages, improving technology currency across the layers of programming languages to databases and implemented enhanced security measures. The Platform is supporting ~13,500 concurrent users with some DB loads reaching ~35K QPS (Queries per Second).

GeM has also engaged external security consultants for exhaustive audits and has implemented ~75 additional security directives. It is also going through an STQC certification audit planned to complete by March 2022.While load on the platform increased by 70%, the page response time has seen an improvement of 40%. On an average, the number of bids per day has also increased from 1,100 in April 2021 to 2,800 in March 2022. Corresponding seller participation per day has also increased to 15,000 from 10,000 in the same period.

GeM was adjudged as the winner in the "Best Use of Digital Technology" category at the CIPS Excellence in Procurement Awards 2021 held at London. GeM emerged the winner in this category after competing with some of the biggest and best names in procurement across the public and private sector globally, including GEP, Jaguar Land Rover, Royal Dutch Shell, VenDigital and Shell.

GeM was also shortlisted as a finalist in two additional categories as well, i.e. 'Public Procurement Project of the Year' and 'Best Initiative to Build a Diverse Supply Base' where it was in the august company of some path-breaking organizations with great initiatives.

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AM/PK/MS