Ten years ago, a single digital portal set out to clean up one of India's most opaque systems — government purchasing. Today, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Dr. Mohan Yadav is marking that bet as a win, citing the Government e-Marketplace (GeM)'s decade-long transformation of public procurement into a transparent, technology-driven engine for Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India).

A platform that moved ₹20 lakh crore in a decade

The numbers Dr. Yadav cited in his post are striking. GeM has recorded a cumulative Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of over ₹20 lakh crore and processed more than 3.78 crore orders since its launch on 9 August 2016. That is not a rounding figure — it represents a wholesale shift in how central and state government bodies buy everything from office stationery to heavy machinery, replacing manual tender processes with a single, auditable digital window.

The platform was born under the Digital India programme and has since been woven into the broader Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan, announced in 2020, which pushed preferential procurement for domestic suppliers and small enterprises. GeM became the structural backbone of that policy intent.

MSEs, women entrepreneurs, and startups at the centre

What separates GeM from a conventional e-procurement tool is its deliberate inclusion architecture. The platform now connects more than 12.28 lakh Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs), over 2.25 lakh women-led businesses, and upwards of 42,000 startups directly to government buyers — segments that historically struggled to navigate complex tendering bureaucracies.

Dr. Yadav framed this reach through the Vocal for Local lens: local artisans, weavers, MSMEs, and indigenous product makers now have a live marketplace with government departments as guaranteed buyers. The political logic is straightforward — if the state is spending public money, it should spend it in ways that build domestic capacity rather than feed import chains.

Modi's procurement reform, a decade in review

Dr. Yadav's post, tagged #10YearsOfGeM, is part of a coordinated BJP narrative marking the portal's anniversary under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership. The Chief Minister described Modi's stewardship as 'visionary' (दूरदर्शी नेतृत्व), positioning GeM not as a bureaucratic upgrade but as proof of concept for technology-enabled governance at scale.

The broader pattern is consistent: since 2014, the central government has used digital platforms — from GSTN to ONDC to GeM — to reduce discretion, widen participation, and create data trails in systems previously vulnerable to leakage. GeM's ten-year arc is the most mature of these experiments, and its GMV trajectory is now a benchmark the government points to when defending the Digital India thesis.

Watch for state-level GeM adoption metrics and any new procurement mandates in the next Union Budget or Ministry of Finance circulars — the next frontier is deepening state government participation beyond the central ministries that currently dominate the platform's order volume.