Goyal invites startups to register at GeM to provide goods, services to govt agencies, PSUs

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday invited startups to register at public procurement portal GeM and offer goods as well as services to government organisations and PSUs. He said that about 4,000 startups have already registered at Government e-marketplace (GeM). The commerce ministry launched GeM in August 2016 to create an open and transparent procurement platform for the government, which runs in several lakh crore.

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday invited startups to register at public procurement portal GeM and offer goods as well as services to government organisations and PSUs. He said that about 4,000 startups have already registered at Government e-marketplace (GeM).

The commerce ministry launched GeM in August 2016 to create an open and transparent procurement platform for the government, which runs in several lakh crore. "I invite all startups to list their products and start offering goods and services to government organisations, PSUs, state government bodies, hospitals, schools, and colleges run by the government," Goyal said at the National Startup Awards 2020 event.

The minister also said that about Rs 4,000 crore was already disbursed through Fund of Funds for startups, "giving it out to about 361 startups". He added that huge potential is there for startups in areas including railways, airport services, food processing, education, healthcare, agriculture, electronics and defence.

"I believe startups will be playing an increasingly important role in many strategic sectors going forward," he said. Further, the minister also called for creating a large pool of language interpreters as huge demand is there for them in missions abroad and other places.

"What we should do to have a large pool of interpreters of Indian and international languages in the country. How we can quickly develop a large pool," Goyal said. He said that for a long time, ministries including external affairs, commerce and tourism are grappling with the need to have a large number of interpreters.

"It's time that we recognise the importance of language...and I think, COVID-19 would be a great opportunity to have languages being taught through VC (video conference) across the country," he added. The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has conceived the first-ever National Startup Awards to recognise and reward outstanding Startups and ecosystem enablers that are building innovative products or solutions and scalable enterprises, with high potential of employment generation or wealth creation, demonstrating measurable social impact.

The awards were presented in 12 sectors which were further sub-classified into a total of 35 categories. These sectors include agriculture, education, energy, finance, space, and security..