Government e-marketplace GeM expected to rival Amazon, Flipkart, says Goyal

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Oct 14, 2019

The Union Government’s “Government e-Marketplace” could grow as large as India’s e-commerce giants Flipkart and Amazon, Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal said at the IICTF closing ceremony on Sunday.

Minister Goyal, who spoke at the closing ceremony of the India International Co-operatives Trade Fair on October 13, has ambitious plans for the upcoming GeM expansion project, Indo-Asian News Service reported. The transformation of the government platform to welcome private businesses and the private sector across a large number of product categories is expected to become one of India’s largest e-commerce platforms. 

The GeM platform will retail “Made in India” products as part of the government’s drive to increase domestic production. The initiative will also encompass setting up stalls for co-operatives at railway stations, Goyal said in the capital. 

The IICTF ran from October 11 to 13 in New Delhi and included business conferences, business to business meetings, cultural events, and an exhibition. The exhibition covered a range of retail categories with a strong focus on textiles. Featured textile categories included powerloom, spinning, jute, silk, coir, handicrafts, handloom, and garmenting among others.

This edition, the IICTF saw a footfall of over 35,000 and over 4,000 trade enquiries, Goyal said in his address. The estimated transactions over the course of the event totalled over Rs 7,000 crore ($1.05 million).