New Delhi: Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal Monday asked India's public procurement platform to onboard more state government agencies, municipal corporations and panchayats for greater volumes and price competitiveness. At an event to mark the decade of Government E-Marketplace (GeM), he also emphasised on university outreach and the need to reach out down to the district level.Noting that goods and services procured by central and state government departments and agencies have crossed ₹5 lakh crore annually starting from a modest ₹422 crore of orders facilitated in 2016-17, Goyal said the orders placed through the GeM by the Military Affairs Department have crossed ₹1.35 lakh crore, and defence accounts for nearly 15% of the total procurement on the platform."Let us take digital public procurement into universities and colleges through structured awareness programmes. This will help in two ways. We can introduce young innovators with newer ideas as sellers on the platform, sellers of their products, ideas, better delivery mechanism for services, and it will help bring new buyers onto the platform, so that universities and colleges can get the best price, best quality, and best product," he said elaborating on GeM's university outreach.While the platform took more than eight years to achieve its first ₹10 lakh crore in cumulative gross merchandise value (GMV), the minister said the next ₹10 lakh crore milestone was reached in less than two years, reflecting accelerated adoption and increasing participation across the public procurement ecosystem.He said the revamp of the platform being undertaken by TCS will add more functionalities and create systems that will drive the next decade of growth."GeM 2.0 will be rolled out in the next few months," commerce secretary Rajesh Agrawal said at the event.Ministry of electronics and information technology secretary S Krishnan said GeM's backend could be integrated with the Public Financial Management System and GST systems, along with payment and ordering processes, as part of efforts to upgrade the platform highlighted the potential for combining artificial intelligence with India's digital public infrastructure.