What a GeM bid document actually tells you
A GeM listing tells you a tender exists. The bid document behind it tells you whether you can bid at all, and it is the only place several of those answers appear.
Measured 9 September 2026. Published 9 September 2026.
A GeM listing tells you a tender exists and roughly what it is for. The bid document behind it tells you whether you are allowed to bid, what it will cost you to try, and what you have to produce if you win. Several of those answers appear nowhere else.
These are the ones worth pulling out, grouped by the decision each one settles.
Can you bid at all
| Term | What it decides |
|---|---|
| Turnover floor | A minimum annual turnover, usually stated in lakhs. A firm incorporated recently may not have the years of accounts to clear it, whatever its capability. |
| OEM turnover floor | A separate floor applied to the manufacturer rather than the bidder. A trader can clear its own and still fail on this one. |
| Experience, in years | Years of past performance in the category. The other criterion that quietly excludes a newly incorporated entity. |
| MSE relaxation | Whether the turnover and experience criteria are waived for a registered micro or small enterprise. When present it often changes the answer entirely. |
| Startup relaxation | The same waiver on DPIIT recognition, applied separately. |
| Documents required from seller | The list you have to produce. This is where OEM Authorization Certificate appears. |
What it costs to bid, and to win
| Term | What it decides |
|---|---|
| EMD | Earnest money deposit, the refundable sum lodged to participate. Sized against the estimated value. |
| ePBG percent | The performance bank guarantee the winner posts, as a percentage. It is working capital tied up for the contract term, which is a different question from whether the job is profitable. |
| Estimated value | The buyer's own figure, which is also what the EMD and the eligibility floors are usually derived from. |
| Reverse auction | Whether price will be competed live after technical evaluation. Firms that will not participate in one need this before they spend a day on the bid, not after. |
| Evaluation method | How the winner is chosen, item by item or on the total. |
| Bid validity, in days | How long your quoted price is binding on you. |
What is actually being bought
The item list as the buyer typed it, one entry per item, plus the BOQ title, the primary category and the total quantity. Where the buyer has raised a Custom Bid for Services the item list is one long entry, which looks wrong and is not: that genuinely is one item.
The buyer identity is worth reading properly too. The document carries the organisation, the specific office, and the ministry and department above it. The office is what tells you whether this is a buyer you already sell to, and it is routinely more specific than anything in the listing.
The OEM authorisation trap
When OEM Authorization Certificate appears in the documents required, there are three cases and they behave completely differently:
You manufacture the product you are bidding. You need nobody's authorisation. You are the OEM.
You are a trader bidding somebody else's product. You need that manufacturer's authorisation, and getting one takes as long as it takes them to answer the phone. Worth starting on day one of the bid window, not day nine.
You manufacture, but you are bidding somebody else's product. You cannot get one at all. A competitor is not going to authorise you. This tender is not available to you, and the sooner you know that the less of the window you spend on it.
It is one line in the document and it decides whether the tender is worth opening.
Preferences, which are not eligibility
Make in India and MSE preference change how bids are compared rather than who may submit one. They are easy to read as a bar and are not one, and reading them as a bar is how firms talk themselves out of tenders they could have won.
Why any of this needs reading twice
There is a second reason to open the document beyond eligibility, which is that it is the only way to find out whether a match was real. A rule that fires on a listing title can fire on the wrong thing: a cable tray is not a cable, and a solar plant maintenance contract is not a solar plant.
Opening the document and checking that the matched term genuinely appears in it turns a keyword hit into a decision. Most keyword hits do not survive that check, and they are set aside before anyone has to read them, which is the entire point.
ScanX reads all of this every hour and sends you the rows that match what you build.