Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal invited startups to register at public procurement portal GeM
Startups to register at public procurement portal GeM and offer goods as well as services to government organizations and PSUs.
"I invite all startups to list their products and start offering goods and services to government organizations, PSUs, state government bodies, hospitals, schools, and colleges run by the government," Goyal said at the National Startup Awards 2020 event.
On Tuesday Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal invited startups to register at public procurement portal GeM and offer goods as well as services to government organizations and PSUs. He also said that about 4,000 startups have already registered at Government e-marketplace through Fund of Funds for startups, “giving it out to about 361 startups”. The GeM was launched to create an open and transparent procurement platform for the government in August 2016. Huge potential is there for startups in areas including railways, airport services, food processing, education, healthcare, agriculture, electronics, and defense, Goyal said.
“I believe startups will be playing an increasingly important role in many strategic sectors going forward,” he said.
As plentiful demand is there for a large pool of language interpreters in missions abroad and other places the minister also called for creating them. “What we should do to have a large pool of interpreters of Indian and international languages in the country and 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 recognize the importance of language and I think, COVID-19 would be a great opportunity to have languages being taught through video conference across the country,” he added.
The awards were presented in 12 sectors. To recognize 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 Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade has conceived the first-ever National Startup Awards. Other award-winning sectors include agriculture, education, energy, finance, space, and security. 1,641 applications were received from startups, spread across 23 states and 4 Union Territories, and included 654 Women-led, 165 academic institution-based, and 331 startups working in rural areas.
“After three rounds of detailed evaluation, 199 startups were selected for presentation before the jury. 192 out of these made presentations before the 15 specialist jury panels, which comprised of domain experts from industry, investors, and government,” it said. Innovation, scalability, economic impact, social impact, environmental impact, and inclusiveness, and diversity are the parameters against which all applications were evaluated.
The recognized entities will benefit from such recognition in many ways such as: attract more business, financing, partnerships, and talent, but also enable them to serve as role models for other entities and to inspire them to be purposeful and responsible about their socio-economic impact.
The showcase is a part of the Startup India portal, which is intended to be an online discovery platform for the most promising startups of the country. The ‘Startup India Showcase’ and ‘Blockchain-based Certificate Verification System’ were also launched during the event. It will help the industry; investors and public authorities find and connect with startups for potential partnerships, investments, and public procurement, respectively. The statement added that the system will enable instant verification and access to certificates of recognitions issued by the DPIIT.
“This feature introduces an added layer of security to the startup certificates. It can be accessed by government departments, procurement entities, investors, and other third parties to verify the status of recognized startups for accessing different opportunities,” the ministry said.
