Maharashtra Public Procurement Sandbox for Startups (SIH26136)

Government of Maharashtra · Skill, Employment, Entrepreneurship & Innovation Department
Maharashtra State Innovation Society (MSInS) & Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC)
Smart India Hackathon 2024 / Problem Statement SIH26136

Production deployment: https://maha-procure-taupe.vercel.app/

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Project Overview & Statutory Background

Indian public procurement rules make it very difficult for early-stage startups to sell to urban local bodies like municipal corporations. Standard municipal tenders require 3+ years of past audited turnover (often ₹5+ crore) and extensive past project credentials. Because startups cannot satisfy these criteria, municipal departments end up buying legacy equipment at higher costs.

This project implements a digital sandbox workflow built around three specific regulatory provisions:

1. Rule 166 of General Financial Rules (GFR), 2017: Allows single-source procurement when an innovation or proprietary article has undergone proven field testing and no market equivalent exists.
2. Rule 173(i) of GFR 2017 & DoE OM F.20/2/2014-PPD: Mandates waiver of prior turnover and prior experience criteria for DPIIT-recognized tech startups.
3. Clause 4.2 of Maharashtra State Innovative Startup Policy 2018: Empowers state departments and municipal corporations to issue sandbox pilot orders up to a statutory ceiling of ₹15 Lakhs without standard tendering.

The sandbox acts as the bridge: a department issues a civic problem statement with a target KPI, a startup runs a monitored 60-day field trial under live telemetry, and once the milestone is verified by the municipal engineer, the system compiles the formal audit dossier and PAC-1 justification required by State Vigilance and the CAG.

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Direct Stage Links for Evaluation

The application syncs state to URL parameters and browser history, allowing direct deep-linking to any stage or persona without requiring a full login flow during testing:

Stage / Persona	Direct URL	Description
Stage 1: Requisition	/?stage=1&role=buyer	Municipal buyer Form-01 challenge formulation and ₹15L cap check
Stage 2: Technical Scrutiny	/?stage=2&role=buyer	Evaluation committee comparative statement and weighted merit scoring
Stage 3: Field Sandbox	/?stage=3&role=startup	60-day SCADA telemetry, telemetry packet log, and milestone uploads
Stage 4: Sanction Order	/?stage=4&role=buyer	GFR 166 sanction order, A4 print dossier, CAG memo, and GeM export
Marathi Localization	/?stage=1&lang=mr	Full interface rendered in Marathi (मराठी)

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Workflow Architecture

The platform runs as a 4-stage pipeline:

1. Stage 1 (FORM-01 Requisition): Municipal nodal officer drafts civic problem scope, ward allocation (e.g., Kothrud Ward 12), budget ceiling (capped at ₹15,00,000), and target KPI benchmark. Role gating prevents startups from authoring department requisitions.
2. Stage 2 (TEC-02 Technical Scrutiny): Scrutinizes shortlisted DPIIT startups using an objective scoring matrix (technical architecture, municipal readiness, sensor accuracy, track record). Ranks candidates and generates the Technical Evaluation Committee scrutiny sheet.
3. Stage 3 (TRACK-03 60-Day Pilot Sandbox): Monitored field deployment. Segregation of duties is strictly enforced: the startup uploads geo-tagged field telemetry and sensor logs; the municipal executive engineer inspects and certifies milestone completion.
4. Stage 4 (ORDER-04 Sanction Order & Audit Dossier): Automatically generates the GFR 166 Proprietary Article Certificate (PAC), 3-tier municipal digital signature chain, CAG audit defense summary, and printable A4 Government Resolution.

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Technical Architecture & Key Decisions

• State synchronization without router bloat: Instead of pulling in react-router-dom (~40KB+ and route configuration overhead) for what is fundamentally a linear 4-stage statutory progression, we synchronized stage, role, and lang directly via URLSearchParams + window.history.pushState with a popstate listener. This supports browser back/forward, deep-linking, and survives page refreshes in under 30 lines of code.
• State persistence: localStorage hydrators protect in-progress challenge edits, uploaded telemetry states, and inspection approvals from accidental page refreshes.
• A4 Print Isolation: The sanction dossier uses @page { size: A4 portrait; margin: 12mm 15mm; } with CSS print media queries hiding navbars, persona pills, and background containers. Browser Ctrl+P produces a clean printable document without background bleed.
• GIGW 3.0 Compliance: Colors follow the standard Government of Maharashtra palette (#0b2545 navy, #ff9933 saffron, #138808 green). Includes GIGW accessibility font scaling (A-, A, A+), yellow-on-black high-contrast mode, and IST clock.
• Centralized Translations: All user-facing strings are maintained in a centralized dictionary (src/data/translations.js) with a dot-notation fallback helper t(lang, key).

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Local Setup

Requirements: Node.js 18+

# install dependencies
npm install

# start local development server
npm run dev

Build production bundle:

npm run build