GeM Portal Guide 2026: Registration, Fees, Bidding, and Payments

GeM Portal Guide: What Every Vendor Actually Needs to Know

GeM, the Government e-Marketplace, is where central ministries, PSUs, and state departments buy almost everything, from office stationery to industrial machinery. It's genuinely one of the easiest procurement platforms to get into. It's also one of the most competitive, since every registered vendor sees the same tenders and the same automated price comparisons.

Most guides stop at "here's how to register." That's the easy part. Here's what actually determines whether you win anything once you're in.

Registration: free to join, but caution money isn't optional

GeM registration itself costs nothing, there's no signup fee. What you will need to pay is caution money, a refundable security deposit that activates your seller account. The amount scales with your estimated turnover on the platform, and if you're new, starting at the minimum slab and upgrading later as your volume grows is the safer move than overcommitting upfront.

A few exemptions worth knowing before you assume you owe it:

• Micro and Small Enterprises manufacturing their primary product category, verified through Udyam Registration, are exempt from caution money and bid security deposits
• Women-owned Micro and Small Enterprises get the same exemption

You'll register using Aadhaar or PAN-based verification, plus GST details, though GST isn't mandatory for every category, artisans and businesses below the GST threshold have exemptions too. Only registered business entities can sign up, individuals can't register as sellers directly.

Vendor Assessment: the step most guides skip entirely

If you're selling higher-value products, electronics, machinery, medical equipment, in what GeM classifies as Quality Categories Q1 and Q2, you'll likely need a Vendor Assessment (VA). This isn't optional paperwork, it's a real evaluation conducted by RITES Ltd, a government inspection agency, involving a desktop review of your business and financial documents plus a video or in-person facility assessment.

The full process typically takes 30 to 45 working days, and once approved, it stays valid for 3 years. If you're planning to sell in a Q1 or Q2 category, factor this timeline in before you count on landing your first contract, it's not something you can complete the week before a tender closes.

Resellers of OEM-verified products may not need their own VA, check your specific category's requirements before assuming either way.

The four ways buyers actually procure on GeM

This is where most vendors underprepare, because the buying mechanism changes what actually wins:

Direct Purchase (Push Button Procurement): For orders up to ₹5 lakh, in categories where at least 10 sources are listed. Once triggered, the system places the order automatically, no evaluation, no negotiation, no human review of your price. If you're not competitively priced in these categories, you simply won't get picked, there's no bid to win over.

Bid (L1): Standard competitive bidding where the lowest technically qualified bidder wins. This is what most vendors think of as "the tender."

Reverse Auction: Sellers actively lower their price in real time against competitors until the auction closes. Requires you to know your actual margin floor going in, not just your comfortable starting price.

Custom Bid / BOQ: Only used when no standard GeM category exists for what's being procured. GeM explicitly cancels custom bids without notice if a matching standard category is later found to exist, don't build a strategy around this route if a standard category already covers your product.

Knowing which of these applies to a listing before you price your offer changes your entire approach. Pricing like it's a negotiable bid when it's actually push-button direct purchase means you never get a second chance to adjust.

Getting paid: the actual timeline

Once you deliver, the buyer issues a CRAC (Consignee Receipt and Acceptance Certificate), essentially a digital confirmation the goods arrived and were accepted. From the moment CRAC is issued, a 10-day payment clock starts automatically. You don't need to chase the department for payment status, it's tracked on your dashboard, and delays past this window are the exception, not the norm, on GeM specifically.

Separately, GeM charges a transaction fee on completed orders, typically in the 1-2% range, factor this into your pricing rather than treating it as a surprise deduction later.

Where vendors lose ground without realizing it

The categories, exemptions, and procurement types above aren't edge cases, they determine whether you're even eligible to be picked before price is considered. A vendor who skips the VA requirement, misjudges which procurement type they're bidding into, or doesn't claim an exemption they qualified for is competing with one hand behind their back before the automated price comparison even runs.

This is also why tracking GeM manually gets harder as you grow: categories, eligibility flags, and procurement types vary tender to tender, and missing one detail on a listing is an easy way to lose a bid you were actually positioned to win.

LiveTenders gives your team a shared workspace to track GeM tenders alongside every other portal you bid on, save and sort by category or deadline, and set up an AI agent with your own keywords and requirements that runs continuously, flagging matching tenders the moment they go live instead of you or your team checking GeM manually every day.

Book a demo to see it running against your specific GeM categories.