Before GeM, central government procurement was fragmented across departments, each running its own tenders with limited price discovery and heavy paperwork. GeM was created in 2016 as a single national online marketplace where government buyers could purchase goods and services directly from registered sellers at transparent, comparable prices. The design goal was twofold: cut the cost and time of procurement, and open government demand — one of the largest single sources of demand in the Indian economy — to small suppliers who had historically been shut out by tendering complexity. The share of Micro and Small Enterprises in cumulative value, at 45.6%, is the clearest measure of how far that second objective has travelled.

The acceleration is the headline economic fact: the platform needed more than eight years to transact its first ₹10 lakh crore and less than two years for the second. That curve reflects both wider adoption across government buyers and a shift of higher-value categories, particularly services, onto the platform. An IIT Delhi study covering FY 2023-24 to FY 2025-26 put monetised benefits from price and process efficiencies at ₹86,571.69 crore and net social saving at ₹1,76,411.46 crore — figures that matter because they quantify a governance reform in fiscal terms. GeM also now applies artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to detect cartelisation, collusion and order-splitting, making it an example of technology used for procurement integrity rather than only for convenience.