TCS, Intellect In Race To Develop Advanced Version Of Public Procurement Portal GeM

IT giant TCS and Intellect Design Arena are in the race for a contract for the development of an advanced version of public procurement portal GeM.

The Central Government had invited tenders for new GeM portal development work in February-March 2023.

After scrutiny of the bids, TCS and Intellect Design Arena qualified to the technical stage.

Fintech Company Infibeam Avenues Limited, is out of the race as it was disqualified during the tender evaluation.

Significantly, the work of running the GeM portal is currently with a private consortium constituting of Intellect Design Arena along with Infibeam. When the time came for the new tender this year, the two companies involved in the consortium parted ways and submitted separate tenders.

On 12 May, Infibeam was declared ineligible to get the new tender, according to the website - eprocure.gov.in , which comes under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTY).

The task of development and maintenance of GeM portal was awarded in July, 2017. The duration of contract post implementation was for five years, which is going to be completed by the end of this year.

In view of this, the process of re-inviting the tender was started. Infibeam Avenues Limited is a listed company engaged in digital payment and eCommerce services in India and was established in 2007.

GeM, an eCommerce portal of the Central Government, is a very successful initiative of the Central Government, having crossed GMV worth 2 lakh crore in the last financial year. GeM can be compared to private platforms like Amazon and Flipkart in India.

Presently more than 40 lakh vendors and service providers are registered on this portal.

Sources reveal that the Government had set a pre-condition for the bidders to have a technical and quality certificate to qualify for the GeM portal tender. Infibeam could not produce an authentic certificate and as a result got disqualified during the tender evaluation process.

As per the latest information, the technical presentations of TCS and Intellect have been scheduled during the next week and the contract is expected to be awarded in June 2023.

GeM has over 63,000 government buyer organisations, over 6 crore sellers and service providers offering a wide range of products and services.

Currently, government departments, ministries, public sector units, state governments, and central armed police forces are allowed to carry out transactions through this portal.

The portal provides a wide range of products from office stationery to vehicles. Automobiles, computers and office furniture are some of the major product categories.