A desi company is plotting a challenge to Google Maps

On July 27, when Google Maps announced the relaunch of its 360-degree panoramic Street View feature in India, people sat up and took notice. Six years ago, the Centre had banned the technology multinational from using this feature in the country, citing security concerns especially around military installations and high-security areas. Google had found a way out: It partnered with Tech Mahindra and the geospatial service company Genesys International to comply with India’s new National Geospatial Policy 2021, which allows products and services like these to be operated by foreign companies only if the imagery data is owned by Indian firms.  

That very day, a lesser-known homegrown company called MapmyIndia launched a competing 360-degree street-view imagery feature called Mappls RealView along with 3D immersive maps and a 3D metaverse maps service. The chief executive officer (CEO) of MapmyIndia, Rohan Verma, called it “a fully indigenous alternative to foreign map apps, one that is more advanced in its capabilities and is more valuable for users.” The entire Mappls RealView maps repository covers hundreds of thousands of kilometres, including more than 40 crore geo-tagged 360-degree panoramas and videos that span cities, tourist spot, city streets and highways, says Verma.  

This much was clear: MapmyIndia was going up against Google Maps. Those who wondered who the challenger was didn’t realise that the Indian company was no newbie. C.E. Info Systems, better known as MapmyIndia, was founded in 1995, three years before Google was born and is, by now, a veteran in the mapping space. If you're an iPhone user in India, and have not downloaded Google Maps on your smartphone, you would in all probability be using Apple's default map, which it has licensed from MapmyIndia. 

But why has MapmyIndia not been able to scale up despite the first-mover advantage? “The primary reason we are not very well known in the country is that we are not as pervasive in the consumer space, whereas Google Maps comes pre-loaded on Android smartphones,” says chairman and managing director, and co-founder of MapmyIndia, Rakesh Verma. “But we are strong in the enterprise segment, and we are much more than a maps company,” says Rakesh. 

Rohan Verma

MapmyIndia offers a range of enterprise solutions, including digital maps as a service (MaaS), software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), application programming interfaces (APIs), and internet of things (IoT) solutions to companies, automotive makers, government bodies, and developers and consumers in the Indian and global markets.  

Verma believes that Google Maps’ method of crowdsourcing data is less reliable than his company’s. It sometimes leads to places that do not exist or makes one drive down narrow roads on a four-wheeler because much of the data would have been provided by two-wheeler riders. "You won't see that on MapmyIndia. Our surveyors have walked and driven millions of kilometres using professional survey equipment and moderated (the data) in the office," he says.  

Over the last 25 years, MapmyIndia surveys collected hundreds of attributes about every location including building footprints, doorsteps, floor numbers, flat numbers, photographs, and types of buildings, all of which have helped the company create a data repository. The company now wants to use that resource to win over the Google Maps consumer.  

But first, let’s take a look at how it has gone about making its mark. 

Read the full story on Mint.