Government departments across India need things everyday: computers for a school, medicines for a hospital, furniture for a district office and much more. For decades, this purchase happened through a system that was slow, paper-heavy, and had access limited to select few. In 2016, the Government e Marketplace (GeM) was launched as a single online platform where government organisations, could easily buy goods and services from registered sellers, ranging from large companies to small-town entrepreneurs.
Ten years on, the more interesting story is not what GeM sold, but what it built in the process. Its true legacy does not lie in the volume of transactions or the categories it covered. It lies in something harder to quantify and far more durable: the confidence it created across an entire ecosystem of buyers, sellers, and institutions that never thought of easy access.
