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Avsar
Buyers

Who Buys, Government Organisations

5210 buying organisations across central ministries, PSUs, railway zones, state departments and municipal corporations. Each page shows what that buyer procures, which portal it publishes on, and, where results are published, who has won its contracts and at what discount.
Organisations
5210
Live tenders
40,962
Estimated value
₹46186.63 Cr
Results in corpus
0

Central ministries and departments

3807 · 37,323 live

Union Government buyers publishing on GeM, CPPP and their own systems.

Public sector undertakings

58 · 2,646 live

Power, oil and gas, steel, mining, telecom, ports and aviation.

Railway zones

7 · 0 live

Zonal railways procuring works, stores, electrical and services.

Defence

11 · 12 live

Service engineering organisations and defence research establishments.

State governments

1265 · 766 live

Notices the state feed attributes to the state government itself rather than to a named department.

State boards and authorities

35 · 73 live

The departments that exist in every state: PWD, water supply, health, rural development, plus development authorities and transport corporations.

Municipal corporations

25 · 142 live

City governments buying civil works, water supply, sanitation and fleet.

Educational institutions

2 · 0 live

IITs, NITs and central universities procuring equipment, works and services.

Avsar is a private platform. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by any of the organisations listed above or any government department. Information is compiled from publicly published tender notices.

Know which of these you can actually win

Avsar reads the tender document, checks every buyer we track against your turnover, completed work and certificates, and tells you whether to bid, citing the clause it read. Free to search.

Check your eligibility freeSee pricing

Avsar never submits a bid for you and never asks for your digital signature certificate.

India has no single government buyer. Public work is tendered by central ministries and their attached offices, by central public sector undertakings, by railway zones, by defence establishments, by state departments, boards and authorities, by municipal corporations, and by universities and research institutes. Each decides its own procurement calendar, writes its notice to its own proforma, and publishes where its rules require it to publish. The directory below lists every buying organisation Avsar has indexed, grouped by type, with the number of notices each has open right now.

The kinds of public buyer in India, and what each one buys

Public money in India is spent by seven broad kinds of buyer, and the directory below is grouped the same way.

  • Central ministries and their attached offices buy everything from stationery to national highway packages, and publish on the Central Public Procurement Portal or on GeM.
  • Central public sector undertakings, the power, oil and gas, steel, mining, telecom, port and aviation companies, buy plant, spares, civil works and site services, often through e-procurement systems of their own.
  • Railway zones and production units procure in three fairly separate streams: works, stores and services.
  • Defence establishments, including service engineering organisations and research laboratories, buy works and equipment under their own registration rules.
  • State departments, boards and authorities, which means PWD, water supply, health, rural development, transport corporations and development authorities, are where most civil works below the national scale actually sit.
  • Municipal corporations buy roads, drains, water supply, sanitation and fleet inside one city.
  • Universities and institutes buy laboratory equipment, campus works and services.

If you sell one thing, usually only two or three of these groups matter to you. Working out which two is the point of this page. The work categories listing runs the same index the other way, from what is bought back to who buys it.

The rules that bind a buyer depend on what kind of buyer it is

Two notices for the same work can carry very different conditions, because the buyers sit under different rulebooks.

Central ministries and departments procure under the General Financial Rules 2017 and the procurement manuals the Department of Expenditure issues under them. Central public sector undertakings largely follow their own purchase manuals, approved by their own boards, which is why a PSU notice can require vendor registration or prior empanelment that a ministry would never ask for.

State departments run on state rules, and the enlistment class you hold with one state's PWD generally does not travel to the next state. That single fact stops more firms bidding outside their home state than price ever does, and it is worth reading up on before you widen your search: see contractor registration classes.

The Public Procurement Policy for Micro and Small Enterprises 2012, made under the MSMED Act, sits across central ministries, departments and CPSEs, so a relaxation you rely on for a central bid may not appear in the same form on a municipal one. See the 25 percent MSE target.

Everything else, EMD percentages, turnover multiples, validity periods, varies by department and by notice. Read the clause, not the average.

Why watching a buyer beats running a keyword search

A keyword search is a question you ask every morning. A buyer is a question you answer once.

Departments tender on cycles. A municipal corporation that put out road resurfacing before this monsoon will put out more before the next one. A state water board runs the same pipeline packages district by district for years. So the buyer that published work you could have won last quarter is the most reliable predictor available of work you can win next quarter.

There is a second reason, and it is about cost. Every department writes to its own proforma, with its own eligibility ratios, its own document set and its own habits about attestation and signing. The first bid you prepare for a new buyer takes days. The fourth takes hours, because the file is already built. None of that saving transfers to an unrelated buyer, which is an argument for depth over spread, particularly when your bid capacity puts a hard ceiling on how many bids you can hold open at once.

Following a named buyer also gets you the corrigenda and the results, not just the opening notice. Alerts that are worth having covers how to set the filter so the daily list stays readable.

Organisation, portal, state and category are four different questions

Mixing these four up is the commonest reason a tender search comes back empty.

The organisation is who is spending the money. The [portal](/portals) is only the software the notice appears on, and one buyer can use two: GeM for goods and standard services, an e-procurement portal for works. The [state](/states) is where the work is, which is not always where the buyer sits, since a central ministry tenders work in every state. The [category](/categories) is what is being bought.

In practice, start from the organisation if you already know your buyers, from the category if you know your trade and are looking for buyers, and from the state if your real constraint is travel distance. Then narrow with the other three.

A firm laying water pipelines in north Karnataka is watching one category, one state and about six named buyers: the state water supply board, the rural development department, two municipal corporations and a couple of urban development authorities. That list fits on an index card, and it does not change much from year to year. Building it is a better use of an afternoon than any search.

What each organisation page shows, and what it cannot

Open any buyer in the list and you get its live notices, the portals it publishes on, the categories it buys in, and, where that buyer publishes results, which firms have won its contracts before. Award history is the closest thing to a published reserve price, and what past award data tells you explains how to read it. Coverage varies, because not every department publishes results.

Be clear about where the information comes from. A public tender list feed carries the notice: reference number, title, dates, category and portal. It does not carry the estimated value, the EMD or the eligibility criteria. Those live inside the tender document. Avsar reads that document, extracts the eligibility clauses, checks them against your company record and cites the clause and page for every verdict, so a finding of not eligible is something you can go and read for yourself. It also tracks EMD and performance guarantees, so you know what capital a bid actually commits. See eligibility and treasury.

Avsar does not submit bids and holds no digital signature certificate, by design.

Frequently asked questions

How do I find government tenders in India?

Start from the buyer rather than the keyword. Three publishing systems cover most public tendering: GeM for goods and standard services, the Central Public Procurement Portal for central ministries and many CPSEs, and the NIC-hosted state portals for state departments, boards and local bodies. Avsar indexes all three and groups the result by buying organisation, so you can find the two or three buyers who tender your category, open them, and watch them instead of running the same search every morning. The long version is in how to find government tenders; the portals directory lists the publishing systems themselves.

What are the three types of tenders?

For central government buyers the General Financial Rules 2017 set out three tender enquiry modes. An advertised or open tender enquiry is published and anyone eligible may bid. A limited tender enquiry goes only to a shortlist of registered or empanelled suppliers. A single tender enquiry is a nomination to one supplier, permitted where it can be justified on record. A directory like this one lists open tenders, because those are the ones that have to be published, which is also why vendor registration with a PSU matters: you cannot bid for what you are never invited to. Separately, tenders are described by cover structure, single, two or three cover, explained in the two cover bidding system. State and PSU rulebooks use similar categories under different names and thresholds.

How can a small business get government contracts in India?

Registration comes first: Udyam for MSME status, a digital signature certificate in the name of the person who will actually sign, and, for works, a contractor enlistment class with the relevant state or department. Then narrow the field. The Public Procurement Policy for Micro and Small Enterprises 2012 places a procurement target on central ministries, departments and CPSEs, and those buyers are named in this directory, so you can watch the ones that buy your category rather than the whole country. See what Udyam registration is worth and the 25 percent MSE target. Avsar helps you find and qualify bids; it does not submit them.

Which companies win the most government tenders in India?

There is no reliable national ranking, and we do not publish one. What is knowable is buyer by buyer. Where a department publishes its award results, you can see which firms won its contracts, how many bidders turned up, and at what discount to the estimate. That is more useful than a countrywide list, because competition on a municipal drainage package is local and the same handful of names will appear again and again. Browse awards and competitors for what has been published, and remember that coverage depends on the department, since not all of them publish results.

Does every government department publish on the same portal?

No, and a single department often uses more than one. Goods and standard services increasingly go to GeM, works and larger services stay on e-procurement portals, and several PSUs, railway zones and defence organisations run systems of their own. A firm that watches only one portal is therefore missing part of its own market. GeM or the e-procurement portal explains which spend tends to go where. This page lists the buyers; the portals directory lists the systems they publish on, and live coverage per portal is published openly.

Is Avsar connected to these government departments?

No. Avsar is a private platform. It indexes tender notices that departments publish publicly on the Central Public Procurement Portal, the state procurement portals NIC hosts, and GeM, and it is not affiliated with, endorsed by or operated by any of the organisations listed here or any government body. It does not submit bids and holds no digital signature certificate. What it does is read the tender document, check the eligibility clauses against your company record with the clause and page cited, and track the money a bid commits. See discovery and eligibility.