Ten years after it quietly replaced reams of paper-based tenders, the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) is drawing fresh political salutes — and Union Jal Shakti Minister C. R. Paatil is among the loudest voices marking the milestone on 10 August 2026.

Paatil's post, written in Hindi, credits Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership for transforming GeM into what he calls not merely a digital platform but 'a powerful medium connecting small entrepreneurs to opportunity, dignity, and a wider market.' He singles out the growing participation of women-led enterprises and SC/ST businesses as the clearest proof that the platform has moved beyond transactional efficiency into genuine inclusion.

From a 2016 pilot to a procurement backbone

GeM was formally launched in August 2016 as the central government's answer to opaque, delay-prone manual tendering. Built on the scaffolding of the Digital India programme announced the previous year, it offered a single online window for government buyers — from central ministries to state departments — to source goods and services from registered vendors without the friction of traditional procurement. The platform's design deliberately lowered the barrier for smaller sellers, including MSMEs, who had historically struggled to navigate complex tender documents.

The Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, launched in 2020, gave GeM a second wind by tying public procurement reform explicitly to domestic self-reliance goals. Mandates favouring local suppliers and social-inclusion quotas for women and marginalised-community entrepreneurs were layered onto the platform's architecture, turning it into an instrument of industrial policy as much as administrative efficiency.

Why SC/ST and women-led vendor numbers matter

Paatil's emphasis on women-led and SC/ST enterprises is not incidental. Public procurement policy reforms stretching back to 2012–2014 introduced preferences for MSMEs and subsequently extended them to businesses owned by women and SC/ST communities — but realising those preferences on the ground required a platform that could verify, list, and route orders to these vendors at scale. GeM became that infrastructure. The minister's framing — invoking the BJP's signature slogan 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas' (Together with all, development for all, trust of all) — positions the platform's inclusion record as a living demonstration of that political promise.

The next hard test will come in GeM's own annual performance data: vendor registration figures, order values routed to women-led and SC/ST units, and any audit findings on compliance will determine whether the anniversary rhetoric holds up to scrutiny.

A decade in, GeM has redrawn the map of who gets to sell to the Indian state — the question now is how many more sellers can find their way onto it.