The Indian Government has decided to jump on the e-commerce bandwagon, and it could be HUGE

Indian e-commerce companies are in for a huge competition from the Indian government itself. As per reports, the government's central purchase arm is considering a portal called GeM (Government e-Marketplace) which would allow the government employees to buy routine office purchases online, be it cups and saucers or laptops and printers.

As per estimates from officials, these commonly used office items make up between 10 to 20% of the government's non-plan expenditure, which for this fiscal is Rs 14.28 lakh crore. This way, the potential purchases of these items is Rs 1.4-2.8 lakh crore.

Now, just to tell you how this could be a huge competition for the private e-commerce companies, Flipkart was aiming to sell goods worth up to $12 billion (Rs 80,000 crore) by June 2016.

The Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals, an organisation that was set up in 1860, is fronting the move. "Procurement is not a social welfare project; the government has to save money on it," a senior government official told ET.

The portal would not only offer goods but also services like mass procurement of flowers for office decoration to taxi booking for official pickups and drops.

The first stage of the project would have a handful of products including laptops, desktops, printers and photocopiers and one service of booking taxis, which would take place by next month. The full website can be expected early next year.

Department of Electronics and Information Technology would be taking care of the website.

The move is also expected to set standards for consumables and eliminate potential corruption," said Sivarama Krishnan, executive director of PwC.

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