Registering as a vendor for coal and steel public-sector buyers

A foundry owner near Dhanbad wants orders from the coal companies' washeries and the steel plant at Bokaro. He fills in registration forms for all of them in one month. A year later he has a vendor code with one, a lapsed application with another, and no orders. Treat it as a project, not paperwork. Pick the tender you want to bid for and work back from it. Give each buyer its own line, with a deadline and a named desk, and chase them one at a time.

Start from the tender you want to bid for

Before any form, read the buyer's last three tenders for your item. They are public on its e-procurement portal. They show which unit buys it, roughly when, in what quantity, and what a bidder must prove: past supply orders, turnover, test certificates, a works inspection.

That last part decides everything. If the tenders for crusher liners ask for past supply to a public-sector buyer, a vendor code alone will not let you bid. So the project does not end at "registration done". It ends at "able to bid on the next tender for this item at this unit", and every other date works back from there.

In Jharkhand the big names are Central Coalfields in Ranchi, Bharat Coking Coal in Dhanbad, the steel plant at Bokaro, and the Damodar Valley power stations near Bokaro. Treat each subsidiary, and each unit that tenders on its own, as a separate buyer until it tells you otherwise. The Jharkhand page places these buyers on the map.

One project line per buyer

Keep three or four lines, not fifteen. These rows are illustrative.

Write the officer's designation and office beside the name. Officers transfer; the desk and the file stay. A line without a next-chase date is a line nobody works. The documents themselves are in getting on plant and mine vendor lists.

Close the eligibility gap before you need it

These gaps can be read off past tenders, so close them before the next tender is out.

• No past supply to a public buyer. Supply first through a registered vendor or a contractor working inside the plant, and keep their purchase orders and your delivery records. Check in the tender whether such orders count.
• Test certificates in the wrong form. Have a production sample tested at a lab the tender accepts, before the tender appears, not after.
• The digital signature certificate. Bidding on an e-tender portal needs one in the authorised signatory's name. Check the class the portal accepts and write its expiry date on the register.
• Names and addresses that differ between your GST, Udyam and bank papers. Fix them at the source, once.

Eligibility rules differ by buyer and change from tender to tender, so read each tender's clauses and confirm with your CA before relying on any of them.

Chase in turn, and in writing

Give each buyer its own chase day: Monday the coal subsidiary, Tuesday the steel plant, Wednesday the power station. One call, one question: which stage is the file at, and is anything pending from your side? Write the answer and the next date on the register that morning.

A call is forgotten by the afternoon. A letter goes on the file. When a file has not moved after two calls, send a short letter on letterhead, by email and by hand where you can:

To: (designation), Materials Management, (unit) Subject: Vendor registration for crusher liners, reference (number), submitted on (date) We submitted our application on (date) and replied to your query of (date) on (date). Kindly let us know whether anything further is needed from us to complete the registration. (Name), (designation), (mobile)

An engineer in the user department who wants better liners can ask about the file inside the company, and you cannot. Tell that engineer where it stands. And never pay anyone who offers to get the code done outside the official process; it puts the registration, and your name in that office, at risk.

Imagine a foundry in Govindpur

Imagine a foundry in Govindpur, on the Grand Trunk Road near Dhanbad, making wear-resistant castings: crusher liners, hammers and grate bars. The details are illustrative.

The owner applied to two coal subsidiaries, the steel plant and a power station in one month, all from a personal email address. One subsidiary's query about a mismatch between his GST and Udyam addresses sat unread, and that application lapsed. The steel plant registered him, but its tenders for grate bars asked for past supply to a steel plant, which the foundry did not have. The digital signature certificate expired in the week a power station tender closed.

The owner started again with one project line per buyer, each worked back from a named tender. The steel plant line changed shape. For two seasons the owner supplied grate bars through a contractor working inside the plant, at a thinner margin, and kept the contractor's orders and the delivery records. The orders were small, and only one of the two seasons broke even. The washery line waited until the address was corrected at source. The certificate's expiry date went on the register in red. The chase days began, and a letter quoting the old reference went to the subsidiary's materials desk. When the next grate bar tender came out, those orders were there to show.

When to stop chasing a buyer

Stop when past tenders show the item is bought only from the equipment maker, or with eligibility you cannot build in a reasonable time. Stop when no user department has a requirement. A code nobody uses is a dormant line on your register, and the portal still wants its renewals.

Registration lets you bid, nothing more. For items bought on the Government e-Marketplace, see how to sell on the GeM portal.

Write one project line backwards from one tender

Choose the tender you most want to bid for and mark what you cannot prove yet. Put a date beside that gap. It is your first project line. If you want the document set and the first bid prepared with you, that is RFP and tender management, and tell us what you need is where it starts.