mapmyindia, owned by CE Info Systems started in 1995 but lost out to Google Maps in the consumer space due to better mapping, graphics and user involvement by Google Maps. In 2018, the company again announced its intention to compete with Google Maps with a better app. The app is not much in use even with the drivers of ride sharing companies like Ola who have dual screens, one loaded with mapmyindia and the other is drivers own Android mobile with Google Maps. Although mapmyindia, Here Maps and Tom Tom come preloaded in the cars, their user statistics is not known.
Mapmyindia has 3 relevant apps on Google Play store, including mapmyindia Move, NaviMaps: 3D GPS and mapmyindia NavIC. Google has two such services including Google Maps and Alphabet backed Waze.
mapmyindia makers have listed two advantages over Google Maps. The first one is that mapmyindia is better in rural India and the second one is that it is an Indian mapping system without advertising and privacy issues.
“MapmyIndia’s maps cover all 7.5 lakh villages, 7500+ cities at street and building-level, connected by all 63 lakh kilometers of road network pan India and within cities, in total providing maps for an unparalleled 3+ crore places across India. This is by far the most exhaustive digital map database of the country, created entirely indigenously using world-class, state-of-the-art mapping technology over last 25 years, far before any foreign organisation started offering maps for India,” states the company release.
With the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) tie up, mapmyindia may be able to rival or better Google Earth with ISRO Bhuvan and also “benefit from the various map-based analytics and insights about weather, pollution, agricultural output, land use changes, flood and landslide disasters etc,” says the company release. This is not a clear cut consumer end service, but a B2B enabler. Google’s consumer facing apps already has similar features.
There is no clear cut advantage provided by the company on the ISRO tie up and there is no time frame mentioned for the advantages if any brought to the consumer end use.
Even in the US, there are many mapping services like Bing Maps, Apple Maps, Mapquest, Open Street Maps, HereWeGo and others that are rated high by the users but Google Maps and Waze dominate the scene. In India, it remains to be seen if mapmyindia can take the leadership position in the near future.