Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: The public procurement portal Government eMarketplace has crossed the 40-lakh-seller mark, just around five months after it crossed 30 lakh sellers on the back of growing MSME registrations on the Udyam portal that is integrated with the marketplace. The portal, launched in August 2016, had registered its first 10 lakh sellers in four years and around five months (till January 2021) while the rest 30 lakh sellers were onboarded in the following 15 months. Importantly, the Udyam portal was launched in July 2020.

“Most of these new registrations are because of integration with Udyam portal since 2020. So, whosoever is coming onto the Udyam portal is directly put onto the GeM portal as well. Hence, not all sellers, who opt for simultaneous GeM registration, might be selling on the marketplace,” Prashant Kumar Singh, CEO, GeM had told Financial Express Online.

According to the data from the portal, 40.94 lakh sellers were registered on GeM, of which 7.65 lakh were micro and small sellers with 56 per cent share in the order value of Rs 2.28 lakh crore so far. Moreover, the portal is also nearing the 1-crore-order mark with 98.97 lakh orders processed as of April 10, 2022.

GeM is currently sifting through its inactive sellers, which automatically got registered through their Udyam registrations, and looking to delist them. Apart from direct registration, there might be other sellers who perhaps have lost interest in selling on GeM. Singh had said that removing such sellers would make active sellers more visible on the platform with more opportunities to sell to the government. GeM would begin engaging with the inactive seller base from this month onwards in order to remove them, Singh had said.

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Out of over Rs 2 lakh crore procurement value, the first Rs 1-lakh-crore procurement was achieved in around four-and-a-half years while the second Rs 1 lakh crore mark was achieved in the financial year 2021-22 itself. According to Singh, GeM would cross Rs 1.5 lakh crore procurement in FY23. 

GeM is in the process of integrating with India Post for the shipment of orders across the country along with panchayats to cater to their procurement needs. “India Post integration will be of help specifically to micro sellers who find challenges in getting government orders due to lack of enough packaging and transportation capacities to deliver orders to every nook and corner of the country” Singh had told Financial Express Online earlier.