Piyush Goyal Invites Startups to Register at Public Procurement Portal GeM And Offer Goods, Services to Government Organisations & PSUs

New Delhi, October 7: 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. According to a Business Standard report, he mentioned that about 4,000 startups have already registered at GeM.

He made this announcement at the first edition of the National Startup Awards 2020 event. Goyal elaborated about the huge potential in areas including railways, airport services, food processing, education, healthcare, agriculture, electronics and defence, and that about Rs 4,000 crore was already disbursed through Fund of Funds for startups, to about 361 startups.

The National Startup Awards, conceived by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), recognised and rewarded the outstanding startups and ecosystem with high potential of employment generation. The first edition of the Awards invited applications across 12 sectors, which were further sub-classified into a total of 35 categories.

For the Awards, a total of 1,641 applications were received from startups spread across 23 states and 4 Union Territories. These applicants included 654 women-led, 165 academic institutions based, and 331 startups working in rural areas.

Then in the next step, all the applicants were evaluated against six broad parameters namely innovation, scalability, economic impact, social impact, environmental impact, and inclusiveness and diversity. Then after three rounds of detailed evaluation, 199 startups were selected for presentation before the jury.