India's Government e-Marketplace Passed Rs 20 Lakh Crore in Public Purchases at Ten Years Old, With 25.45 Lakh Sellers and 3.78 Crore Orders

India’s Government e-Marketplace (GeM), the online portal where government offices buy goods and services, had facilitated more than Rs 20 lakh crore (Rs 20 trillion) of purchases through more than 3.78 crore orders as of 7 August 2026, according to a Ministry of Commerce and Industry release of that date. The portal completed ten years on 9 August 2026. Its yearly value rose from Rs 422 crore in FY 2016-17 to over Rs 5 lakh crore in each of FY 2024-25 and FY 2025-26.

Dividing the two rounded totals gives an average order of about Rs 5.3 lakh (our division). The figures in this piece are the ministry’s as of 7 August 2026, and tuput found no newer cumulative total as of 29 October 2026.

The second Rs 10 lakh crore took under two years

The ministry’s release says the first Rs 10 lakh crore of cumulative value took more than eight years, and the next Rs 10 lakh crore came in less than two. Earlier official and press figures show the climb. A Press Information Bureau (PIB) release of 8 February 2023 put the cumulative total above Rs 3 lakh crore. A written reply in the Rajya Sabha, reported by the Press Trust of India on 10 August 2024, gave Rs 9.82 lakh crore as of 30 July 2024.

The ministry then said on 25 August 2025 that GeM had crossed Rs 15 lakh crore. IANS reported on 6 April 2026 that the ministry put the total at Rs 18.4 lakh crore, of which Rs 5 lakh crore was transacted in FY 2025-26.

A pilot with 120 product categories

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India described the start in its Report No. 18 of 2020. The Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals (DGS&D) had been the central buying agency since 1951. In February 2016 the government decided to build an online, end-to-end buying system, and a pilot developed by DGS&D with the National e-Governance Division went live on 9 August 2016. It covered 120 product categories and one service category.

The report lists the weaknesses of the old DGS&D rate-contract system that GeM was meant to fix, among them no pooling of orders from different offices to get a better price, openness to cartels (suppliers agreeing prices among themselves), a focus on products only, and delayed payments.

GeM was incorporated as a company on 17 May 2017, and DGS&D was wound up on 31 October 2017. The Ministry of Finance made purchases through GeM mandatory for government users under Rule 149 of the General Financial Rules, 2017. The new platform went live in two phases, on 26 January 2018 and in December 2018. By March 2019 the CAG counted 13.81 lakh orders worth Rs 16,286.99 crore, and by 30 March 2020 the total stood at 38.38 lakh orders worth Rs 51,467 crore, including some orders still at an early stage.

How an office buys, and from whom

The PIB’s February 2023 release lists the buying modes: direct purchase, L1 (the lowest-priced offer), bidding, reverse auction (sellers bid prices down) and a bid followed by a reverse auction. Users are authenticated through links to government databases, including Aadhaar, PAN, the startup register, the GST network and the company registry. The GST side of that is explained in tuput’s piece on how GST works.

According to the PIB’s 8 August 2026 feature, buyers include Central and State ministries and departments, public sector undertakings, autonomous bodies, local bodies, panchayats and cooperatives. The number of buyer organisations rose from 1,707 to 1.37 lakh over the ten years. The catalogue has more than 10,660 product categories and 350 service categories, from medical equipment, furniture and computers to handicrafts, transport, catering and vehicle hiring. The feature lists Rate Contracts for recurring purchases and the removal of caution money (a deposit) for sellers among recent reforms.

At a press conference reported by All India Radio on 7 August 2026, GeM’s chief executive, Mihir Kumar, said all States are now onboarded. The PIB feature says the Department of Military Affairs alone had crossed Rs 1.35 lakh crore in cumulative value as of 6 August 2026.

The sellers: from 3,339 to 25.45 lakh

The release counts profile-completed sellers at 25.45 lakh, up from 3,339. Registered micro and small enterprises (MSEs) rose from 2,424 to 12.25 lakh. MSEs have filled orders worth more than Rs 9.07 lakh crore, 45.6 per cent of cumulative value. More than 2.24 lakh women-led MSEs have filled over 50 lakh orders worth more than Rs 99,147 crore, and 42,242 startups have won orders worth over Rs 65,633 crore. Tuput’s piece on India’s recognised startups and unicorns covers how those firms are counted.

The PIB feature gives figures for FY 2025-26 alone. Over 11 lakh registered MSEs executed more than 51 lakh orders worth over Rs 2.36 lakh crore. More than 2.1 lakh registered women-led MSEs secured over Rs 28,000 crore. Procurement from SC/ST enterprises exceeded Rs 6,000 crore, up nearly 28 per cent, and procurement from startups passed Rs 19,000 crore, up over 36 per cent.

The release also lists seller-side fee cuts. The transaction charge fell from 0.50 per cent to 0.30 per cent. Orders up to Rs 10 lakh carry no transaction charge, which the release says means 97 per cent of all orders attract no fee. The maximum fee is capped at Rs 3 lakh, and vendor assessment fees are down by up to 92 per cent.

Other support includes GeM Sahay, a mobile app that gives eligible proprietorship sellers collateral-free working-capital loans. On 18 June 2026 GeM signed an agreement with CSC e-Governance Services India Limited to open 50 GeM Suvidha Kendras (help centres for sellers) on a pilot basis across select States, including the Delhi region. The PIB says about 5.3 lakh sellers had earlier registered through the Common Service Centre network. The chief executive said in the release that GeM has moved public buying from opaque, fragmented processes to one transparent marketplace where capability determines success.

The savings claim and what supports it

The release cites an IIT Delhi study covering FY 2023-24 to FY 2025-26. It estimates a monetised benefit of Rs 86,571.69 crore from price and process efficiencies and a net social saving of Rs 1,76,411.46 crore. In a comparison of 101 items with other online marketplaces, GeM was cheaper for 74.3 per cent of the items, with a spend-weighted saving of 13.6 per cent. The chief executive told the press conference that the comparison was with Amazon, Flipkart and IndiaMART, according to All India Radio.

ANI’s report breaks the Rs 86,571.69 crore into Rs 85,940 crore from the gap between estimated and contracted prices, Rs 590.74 crore of notional publicity value and Rs 40.95 crore from payment-cycle financing gains. The release does not say who commissioned the study or publish its method, and tuput has not seen the study itself.

An earlier public comparison is in the Economic Survey 2021-22. It checked 22 goods against Amazon, Flipkart and company websites as on 6 January 2022. Ten of the 22 were cheaper on GeM, and prices on GeM were about 9.5 per cent lower across the sample, against about 3 per cent in the previous year’s survey. The survey’s table also shows items that cost more on GeM. It cites a World Bank assessment that found average savings of 9.75 per cent on the median price between February 2019 and January 2020. The samples (22 and 101 items), years and methods differ, so these figures do not form one series.

What the 2020 audit found

The CAG audited GeM’s first phase, from 26 January 2018 to 31 March 2019. It concluded that GeM had been successful in putting government procurement online. It also made findings the ministry’s 2026 release does not mention.

The electronics ministry’s 2011 guidelines call for a quality-certification audit of e-procurement systems by the Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) directorate. The CAG said that audit had not been done to the guidelines’ scope, so it could not take assurance on the integrity of the e-bidding mode, which made up more than 37 per cent of the value bought through GeM in the period examined. GeM’s management pointed to STQC reports of August 2018, December 2018 and August 2019, and the auditors did not accept their scope as meeting the guidelines.

The CAG called payment delay “a serious systemic issue” for the period it examined. It also said the savings GeM published were calculated as the difference between a market price and the offered price and that the method needed review. GeM’s management told the auditors in February 2020 that it had asked IIM Lucknow to develop a framework for calculating savings. The report is dated 2020, and tuput did not find a later published audit of GeM.

On payments, Swarajya reported on 9 January 2026 that MSME Samadhaan, the government portal for delayed-payment complaints, showed Rs 31,039.28 crore in pending applications as of December 2025. That figure covers all buyers, not GeM alone.

What the ministry says comes next

The release says GeM now digitises the whole buying cycle and uses artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to flag suspected cartelisation, collusion and order splitting (dividing one purchase into smaller ones to avoid a rule). It adds that the transaction record lets policymakers monitor public spending. The chief executive said the next decade will be shaped by deeper use of AI.

The PIB feature says GeM’s integration with the Central Public Procurement Portal gives one access point for tender information, and that the Indian Railways e-procurement system and the Defence Public Procurement Portal are being integrated. It also lists April 2025 partnerships with IN-SPACe for space-technology buying and Drone Federation India for drones. The Suvidha Kendra pilot is to be assessed for expansion to other States and Union Territories, the June 2026 PIB release says.

For the first four months of FY 2026-27, the release gives GeM’s value as Rs 1,47,888 crore.