During my student days, we used to hear stories about how the government procurement system was riddled with numerous challenges starting from the opaqueness of the whole system to counterproductive systemic requirements, there were some serious allegations of inconsistency involved in it as well. All these conversations inspired me to think of ways to harness technology to build transparency, rigour and efficiency in the whole process.
We at Intellect Design Arena Ltd got the opportunity to leverage technology to bring in the new wave of digital when we won the award for building technology and systems for a complete Procurement Portal – Government eMarketplace (GeM) for the Indian Government. This meant that we had to understand the finer nuances of the State Government and Central Government systems. It was a proud moment for me and my teams at Intellect for it was a huge task to live up to the expectations of integrating complex procurement systems run by various organizations under the Central and State Governments. A lot of systems were in practice but many were not documented.
Today, our Honourable Prime Minister announced that Government e Marketplace (GeM) has achieved a milestone of 1 lakh crore orders through the Transparent Digital Platform in a single year. According to some reports, the government must have saved over 15% in cost (around 15,000 Cr) besides accelerating bidding and procurement.
Today, I feel pride and humility in equal parts in being able to make a small contribution towards making India better by working to improve the rigour of digital infrastructure in the country. I would like to thank my teams at Intellect Design Arena Ltd who have helped me in making my dream into reality.
#GeM #gmv #procurement
