The COVID-19 outbreak has become a humanitarian and economic crisis and is already impacting countries with unprecedented speed and severity. The crisis has left enterprises to think about business continuity like never before and organizations are being pushed to rapidly operate in new ways and re-define business models.

During these challenging times, digital technologies are playing a significant role, in their diverse forms, and are providing solutions for addressing the current crisis and offering innovative solutions for achieving desired outputs.

Government e-marketplace (GeM) is a state-of-the-art digital public procurement platform that has used technology to remove entry barriers for bonafide sellers and has created a vibrant e-marketplace with a wide range of goods and services. Such advanced technology platforms has played pivotal role in keeping the public procurement services in the time of crisis up and running. GeM has around 17 lakh products, 52,892 Transactional Value and 372,241 Service Providers on GeM.

Further, as per Rule 149 of the GFR-2017, Government has made procurement of Goods and Services by Ministries/ Departments of Central and state Governments mandatory through GeM platform. Envisaged by the Government of India, under the aegis of Digital India Mission, GeM strives to keep pace with the ever-evolving technological challenges and stakeholder aspirations.

GeM has now introduced GeM 4.0, a more robust, flexible e-marketplace with an intuitive User Interface (UI) to make procurement simpler than ever.

In view of Hon’ble Prime Minister vision towards self-reliance under the “Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan” Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in partnership with GeM is organizing a high-level National Public Procurement Conclave (NPPC) 2020: Digital Exhibitions and Conferences with the theme “Technology-enabled Govt Procurement -Towards efficiency, transparency, and Inclusiveness” on the anniversary of GeM Establishment Day on 9 August 2020 through CII Hives Digital Platform.

NPPC brings together a host of Buyers/Sellers and the stalwarts of the industry with the massive opportunities in the Public Procurement sector. It offers opportunities to interact with more than 900 buyers/sellers across sectors along with more than 400+ Public Procurement Managers from different Governments Departments and PSUs across different states and Union Territory.