PrintFriendlyBy onboarding over 10 lakh Micro and Small Enterprises, 1.3 lakh artisans and weavers, and 1.84 lakh women entrepreneurs, GeM has opened the doors of public procurement to Bharat’s real builders—those from rural, semi-urban, and underserved regions.
As India surges ahead on its journey toward becoming a $10 trillion economy and beyond, the Modi government’s thrust on transparency, efficiency and digital innovation in governance has found a resounding success story in the form of Government e-Marketplace (GeM). Launched in 2016, GeM has rapidly evolved into one of the world’s largest public procurement platforms, symbolizing the fusion of technology, inclusion, and self-reliance (Atmanirbharta).
Now, in its 8th year, GeM is no longer just a digital portal, it is a revolution in governance and economic empowerment, driving inclusive growth at the grassroots level while ensuring cost-effective, high-quality procurement for government buyers.
A Model of Tech-Enabled, Inclusive Growth
As India celebrated the 8th Incorporation Day of the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) on May 19, 2025, the platform stood tall as a beacon of how digital transformation can drive inclusive, transparent, and participatory governance. Far from being a mere procurement portal, GeM has evolved into a powerful engine of socio-economic empowerment—reaching deep into the heart of Bharat and transforming how the government does business with its citizens.
Empowering India’s Productive Backbone: With over 10 lakh Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) now integrated into the platform, GeM has significantly broadened the base of suppliers who can directly access government procurement—once a space dominated by large, urban-centric vendors. This inclusion represents a tectonic shift, ensuring that India’s growth narrative is no longer confined to boardrooms but reaches small manufacturers, local innovators, and rural entrepreneurs.
Preserving Heritage, Creating Livelihoods: GeM has also played a pivotal role in reviving traditional Indian craftsmanship, with 1.3 lakh artisans and weavers onboarded. By connecting these communities to national and even global buyers, GeM is not only creating sustainable incomes but also helping preserve India’s rich artisanal heritage. In doing so, the platform acts as a bridge between legacy and modernity—between village looms and digital dashboards.
Gender Empowerment Through Market Access: In a truly remarkable achievement, 1.84 lakh women entrepreneurs have found a place in the public procurement ecosystem through GeM. This is more than a statistic—it is a powerful example of how digital tools, when designed for inclusion, can challenge structural inequalities and promote women-led development. Whether it’s self-help groups or solo founders, women are now active participants in government supply chains.
Start-Ups Driving Innovation for Governance: The platform’s openness to 31,000+ start-ups has unlocked a new era of innovation in public service delivery. These startups bring agility, cutting-edge technologies, and disruptive ideas to the otherwise traditional sphere of government procurement—be it drone services for hospitals, AI solutions, or energy-efficient technologies. GeM is, in essence, India’s first true GovTech marketplace.
Pan-India Penetration with Policy Mandates: GeM’s success is not confined to a few pockets. With operations spanning all 36 States and Union Territories, and mandatory usage adopted by many—including Maharashtra, Assam, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh—the platform has become the default procurement engine for the nation. States are also integrating their financial management systems (IFMS) with GeM, enhancing efficiency and real-time tracking.
Driving Savings and Efficiency in Government Spending
At the heart of GeM’s success lies its ability to deliver tangible fiscal efficiency and strategic value in public procurement. Independent assessments, including from the World Bank and data drawn from the Economic Survey of India, affirm that GeM has consistently delivered average cost savings of 9.5–10% across government purchases. These savings are not marginal—they translate into thousands of crores of rupees, which are now available for reinvestment into critical national priorities such as infrastructure development, public health, education, and social welfare programs. Such systemic savings make GeM not just a digital reform but a powerful enabler of smart governance and fiscal prudence, ensuring that every rupee spent delivers maximum value to the nation.
GeM is emerging as a cornerstone in high-value and strategically significant procurements, bringing unmatched transparency, speed, and cost-efficiency to sectors that directly impact national security and citizen welfare. In defense, it enabled the procurement of equipment worth over ₹5,000 crore for the Akash Missile System—strengthening India’s defense preparedness and advancing the Atmanirbhar Bharat vision. In public health, GeM played a critical role during national emergencies by facilitating vaccine procurement worth ₹5,085 crore, ensuring timely and effective mass immunization. Expanding its reach beyond goods, GeM now supports advanced service delivery, including the deployment of drones-as-a-service for AIIMS, enhancing healthcare logistics and diagnostics. It has also facilitated insurance services for over 1.3 crore citizens, improving financial inclusion, and enabled wet leasing of chartered flights and CT scanners, proving its capability to handle complex, high-compliance transactions. Together, these initiatives underscore GeM’s pivotal role in powering smart governance and inclusive national development.
Lowering Costs for Sellers, Increasing Participation
A defining feature of GeM’s inclusive design is the way it has flattened cost barriers for small and first-time vendors who once struggled to access government contracts. Today, 97 percent of all transactions on the portal are completely free of platform charges, while the remaining few attract sharply reduced fees—sliced by 33 to 96 percent and now capped at a modest ₹3 lakh even on orders exceeding ₹10 crore, a dramatic fall from the earlier ₹72.5 lakh ceiling. For enterprises with annual turnover below ₹1 crore, the caution-money deposit has been slashed by 60 percent, and entire categories of sellers—artisans, self-help groups, and women-led businesses—enjoy full exemptions. By replacing punitive entry costs with a pro-people fee architecture, GeM has turned public procurement from an opaque, bureaucratic hurdle into a genuine marketplace of opportunity, unlocking government demand for the grassroots builders of Bharat.
Digital Governance: The Launch of GeMAI
In a landmark move for public sector innovation, the Government eMarketplace (GeM) has become the first government platform in India to integrate a Generative AI-powered chatbot, GeMAI into its operations. This breakthrough initiative represents not just a technological leap but a paradigm shift in how citizens and businesses interact with government procurement systems.
GeMAI supports both text and voice interactions in 10 Indian languages, a significant step toward digital inclusion. By offering seamless multilingual support, GeM ensures that users from rural and non-English-speaking regions are no longer disadvantaged in navigating the complex procurement ecosystem. Whether it’s a micro-entrepreneur in a small town or a large vendor from an urban center, GeMAI empowers all users with instant query resolution, real-time bid assistance, and smooth navigation support, making participation easier, faster, and more user-friendly.
This innovation sets a new benchmark in AI-powered governance, where automation is not just efficient but also empathetic and inclusive. GeMAI symbolizes the Modi government’s commitment to building smart, transparent, and responsive digital systems, firmly placing India among the global frontrunners in the public adoption of generative AI. As GeMAI continues to evolve, it promises to deepen citizen engagement and democratize access to government platforms—making governance not only more efficient, but also more human-centric.
Institutional Integration: Scaling Across States
The Government eMarketplace (GeM) has set a national precedent by achieving seamless integration with multiple state treasury and procurement systems, cementing its role as the unified digital procurement backbone of India. Through its interoperability with Integrated Financial Management Systems (IFMS), GeM has successfully aligned with the financial frameworks of states like Kerala, Odisha, Assam, West Bengal, and Delhi, enabling real-time budget control, streamlined payments, and faster procurement cycles. This integration ensures that government departments at both central and state levels function with synchrony, transparency, and fiscal accountability.
Looking ahead, Gujarat, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and several other states are preparing to roll out similar integrations, which will further strengthen the digital procurement ecosystem and expand GeM’s footprint across governance structures. The platform’s ease of use, transparent processes, and cost-efficiency have prompted mandatory adoption in major states such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Chhattisgarh, and Uttar Pradesh. This growing momentum is a testament to the platform’s credibility, reliability, and transformative impact.
GeM’s widespread federal adoption is a remarkable example of cooperative federalism in action. It signifies a shared national commitment to reform, where both Centre and States converge on a common goal—building a procurement ecosystem that is transparent, inclusive, and efficient. In doing so, GeM is not only modernizing governance but also unifying India’s vast and diverse public procurement landscape into a single, technology-enabled framework of progress.
A Visionary Model for Viksit Bharat
As India proudly ascends to become the 4th largest economy globally and sets its sights on emerging as the 3rd largest by the end of this decade, it is imperative to acknowledge the silent enablers that are powering this transition. Among the most critical pillars of this transformation is the Government eMarketplace (GeM)—a flagship digital initiative that perfectly embodies the Modi government’s vision of “Minimum Government, Maximum Governance.”
GeM serves as more than just a procurement platform—it is a catalyst for structural economic reform, a driver of transparency, and a launchpad for inclusive growth. By digitizing the public procurement process, GeM has eliminated middlemen, minimized human discretion, and brought speed, scale, and standardization to government purchases. In doing so, it has not only delivered massive public savings—validated by independent institutions like the World Bank—but also redirected those savings toward critical sectors like infrastructure, healthcare, and education.
What truly sets GeM apart is its ability to extend the benefits of governance to the grassroots level. By onboarding over 10 lakh Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs), 1.3 lakh artisans and weavers, and 1.84 lakh women entrepreneurs, GeM has opened the doors of public procurement to Bharat’s real builders—those from rural, semi-urban, and underserved regions. It has unlocked access to markets that were previously reserved for large, entrenched vendors, thereby democratizing economic opportunity.
GeM’s impact goes far beyond mere procurement. It has become a tool for gender equity, by mainstreaming women-led enterprises into the national economic flow; it has preserved and promoted local crafts and indigenous skills, ensuring that artisans are not just surviving but thriving. The integration of startups and SHGs further reflects a shift toward innovation-driven, community-led development.
Moreover, by instituting real-time analytics, automated workflows, and AI-enabled governance tools like GeMAI, GeM has emerged as a global benchmark in digital governance. It is actively plugging leakages, curbing corruption, and creating a trust-based ecosystem where every rupee spent by the government delivers maximum value and vibrancy.
In a rapidly growing India—where scale, speed, and accountability are non-negotiable—GeM stands as a shining example of how technology can empower governance and how governance, in turn, can empower the people. As India accelerates on its journey toward becoming a Viksit Bharat (Developed India) by 2047, platforms like GeM are not just support systems—they are transformational engines driving the nation’s rise.
GeM is more than an e-commerce platform for the government. It is the mirror of Modi-era governance, efficient, empowering, tech-led, and inclusive. As Shri Mihir Kumar, CEO of GeM, aptly put it:
“When innovation meets inclusion, it unlocks opportunities for every Indian entrepreneur.”
Backed by visionary leadership and robust execution, GeM is indeed fueling the dream of Aatmanirbhar Bharat and paving the path for Viksit Bharat@2047.
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(The views expressed are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the position of the organisation)