The first six months of 2020 have been nothing short of a roller coaster ride as many changes took place in diverse industries due to the pandemic which shook the entire world. Businesses were functioning normally until February end, but March onwards, every industry was shaken up and has been bearing the brunt of COVID-19. Be it the real estate industry, the manufacturing industry or the construction industry, almost all of them have had to deal with major financial losses. With the phased opening of the lockdown in June, many sectors which were operating from confined spaces started restructuring themselves to get back into the business. Let’s take a look at the journey of tendering processes in the last six months along with what lies ahead, with insights from BidAssist’s own proprietary data and users behaviour information.
- The World Bank warns of a drop in India’s GDP by 2.5% owing to the worldwide Covid-19 outbreak.
The pandemic has plunged industries in various sectors, shredding per capita incomes and pushing millions to poverty. Spill-overs from weaker global growth and balance-sheet stress in the financial sector also weigh in on most activities. BidAssist’s proprietary data reveals that tenders worth more than 1 crore account for 6% of the total tenders and the tenders worth 10 lacs – 1 crore stand at 24%, which is quite similar to the second half of 2019. A discernible difference lies in tenders of up to 10 lacs estimated at 30% in June’20 while they accounted for 46% in December’19.
However, we entered the month of June with high hopes and from June 8th onwards, the government announced a calibrated exit strategy under which more economic activities would be allowed across the country. The RBI has also stepped in to provide adequate liquidity to counter a sudden stop in economic activity.
- Indian SMEs are struggling with their own set of challenges. Nevertheless, they are fighting & coping up with the assistance of the Government.
The biggest challenges faced by SMEs in the face of COVID-19 are liquidity issues, shortage in demand, shortage of raw materials and lack of manpower. These can be minimized with self-assessment of the entire system which includes learning to manage with limited resources, ROI-driven marketing practices and cost-cutting strategies. The organizations should formulate working financial strategies and research and study about the various schemes announced by the government from time to time to tide over the crisis. Technology has always proved to be a great asset for businesses. Business software applications like ours and other industry software which streamline their business processes can help a great deal.
The count of total tenders that were added monthly from Jan-March 2020 is around 2.5-2.7 lakhs while in the month of April only 0.9 lakhs could be added. The numbers are now gradually picking up from June onwards, with 2 lakh tenders added in the bucket. July showed us green signals as the economy is slowly getting back on track contributing around 6.2 Mn total tenders.
- Self-reliant India aligned with SMEs to propel in future.
A huge economic commitment by the government and the call of the Prime Minister for “Atmanirbahr Bharat” gave innumerable opportunities to the SME sector. Boycotting Chinese goods gave another sigh of relief for our SMEs. They can now usher in an era of the digital revolution with the new paradigm shift of the ecosystem. Digital media is an additional option which is extremely economical and readily accessible for all SMEs.
- Maharashtra & Uttar Pradesh acquired the top spots at the state level. The Ministry of Railways & Public Works Department remained strong at authority level.
The distribution of state-wise tenders remained the same as in PY 2019 with Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh gaining the top two positions with 14% & 12% contribution respectively. West Bengal, Karnataka & Rajasthan acquired the third, fourth and fifth position. Various states have been encouraged to help MSME units to recover from the disruption caused by the lockdown and in line with this, U.P. is all set to erect industrial parks for MSMEs in six of its Industrialised Districts. On the authority level, the Ministry of Railways jumped to the first place from the fifth place in Dec’19 and PWD acquired the second position in releasing a maximum number of tenders in June 2020.
- Digitalization is the key ingredient for SMEs looking to beat the competition.
A study, based on a survey of SMBs from across the Asia Pacific region conducted by IDC and commissioned by Cisco, shows that SMBs that are more digitally mature, enjoy twice as many benefits in terms of revenue & productivity as compared to those that have an indifferent approach to digitalisation. With the E-procurement software rising tremendously nowadays, the comfort and ease with which people are procuring tenders across India have made SMBs make progress in their digitalisation journey.
Our SME user base has grown exponentially with 2.3 mn users and counting as compared to 1.3 mn users in Dec’19. We always value our customers and regularly upgrade ourselves to meet the industry demands and needs.
BidAssist is an online government tender portal that helps SMEs find latest e-tenders, tenders notices and bid awards for most of the public and private sector departments, thus helping you take your first step towards digitalisation. We publish all the tenders the same day they are issued on the government websites.
You can subscribe to our exclusive tender alert notification feature and apply & save filters so that you can search for tenders of your interest. You will receive all latest tenders on a daily, weekly and monthly basis through Email, SMS or WhatsApp.
Our platform hosts 15000+ authorities across 100+ categories. We welcome your comments and suggestions! Let us know your thoughts at contact@bidassist.com and we will be happy to assist you further.
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