Tatsat Chronicle Magazine

GeM providing market access to MSEs, women SHGs and startups

July 9, 2021
make in india

The Government e-Marketplace (GeM) is providing increased market access to seller groups like MSEs, women SHGs, and startups, thus reinforcing the ‘Make in India’ initiative and the Centre’s policy to promote local MSEs  (Medium and Small Enterprises). Presently, the GeM has over 6,90,000 MSE sellers and service providers on board contributing over 56 per cent of the total order value on GeM. The number of MSEs registered on the GeM platform has increased by over 62 per cent since the last FY (2019-20).

Since its inception in August 2017, GeM has facilitated 67.27 lakh orders from 18.85 lakh registered sellers and service providers for 52,275 govt buyers. Almost seven lakh MSE sellers and service providers have fulfilled 56.13 percent of the total order value on GeM. Recently, the MSME Ministry also launched a new Udyam Registration Scheme for all MSME businesses. The new Udyam form has a provision to take consent from businesses for auto-registration on GeM portal. As on May 31, 2021, out of the total 18,75,427 vendors registered on GeM, 6,98,178 are MSEs. The GeM platform has ensured the seamless implementation of the Make in India policy and the Public Procurement Policy for preference to MSEs. The GeM is a dedicated platform for startups to list their products.

To address the credit access challenges faced by the MSMEs, GeMSAHAY app has been rolled out paving the way for frictionless financing. One of the major challenges faced by MSEs is access to timely cash-flow based financing. Though there are schemes like TReDS that facilitate loans, MSEs continue to find it difficult to avail of uncollateralized cash-based loans. GeM is collaborating with the Indian Software Product Industry Round Table (iSPIRT) for the implementation of the GeM- SAHAY project, which has been tailored to meet the specific needs of MSMEs on the GeM platform.  Through the ‘GeM SAHAY’ app, loan disbursement will be instant and will provide GeM sellers with the best loan offers from public sector banks, private banks and NBFCs.

As most know, GeM was also the first e-commerce portal in the country which started displaying the “Country of Origin” of all products, giving its buyers the right to make an informed decision. Going a step further, GeM has also started highlighting the local content percentage on the product description page. So even within the products made in India, buyers can identify products that have higher local content and make informed decisions accordingly.