Should we sell to the Indian government and PSUs, and where does GeM fit in?

Treat government as its own market with its own GTM rather than as a large enterprise. Central government buyers are expected to use GeM, the Government e-Marketplace, for anything available on it, so a listing there is the entry ticket, but a listing sells nothing on its own: deals come from a department that already wants the outcome, usually after a pilot, a demo to a technical committee, or a state or PSU innovation challenge. The rules help a young company more than founders expect. Under the General Financial Rules a DPIIT-recognised startup can be exempted from prior experience, prior turnover and earnest money deposit, and states such as Gujarat, Odisha and Haryana have relaxations of their own, but the buyer has to allow the exemption in each bid, so read every tender rather than assuming it. Plan for what does not change: specifications written around an incumbent, lowest-price (L1) evaluation on many bids, milestone payments, performance guarantees, and cycles measured in quarters. Many software companies do better at first by selling through a system integrator that already holds the contract, until they have one reference account in government of their own.