BUSINESS SPECIAL..... Map Their Battle

Map Their Battle

As homegrown mapping company MapmyIndia moves from automobile navigation to connected devices like phones, it steps on the territory of internet giant Google. Can it beat the Goliath of internet?

It was a late January morning. Bitter winter had just taken leave of Delhi. Rakesh Verma, founder and CEO of MapmyIndia, settled down in his Jaguar, tapped on the built-in navigator and entered the destination: Kailash Colony Metro Station, barely four kilometres from his home in Block S, Greater Kailash II. Rashmi Verma, his wife and cofounder of MapmyIndia, took her seat and launched the MapmyIndia app on her iPhone. She entered the same destination. As the car moved, they compared notes on the two versions of the mapping and navigation software.

That day, the Vermas were racing against time. They were about to launch the new MapmyIndia app at the AutoExpo 2018 and their challenge was to put together the best of both apps — the one installed in the car, which has the entire map of India downloaded on it and works without internet connectivity, and the app that works on a connected device and gives real-time traffic updates. MapmyIndia, promoted by the Vermas, has around ₹200 crore in revenues, remains profitable and dominates the map space in automobiles in India, including Jaguars. However, there are new challenges. Offline maps, though always working, cannot estimate the time to reach the destination and the best route.

CE Info Systems, the company that owns MapmyIndia, was founded by the Vermas back in 1992. It launched its retail online map product in India in 2004 much before Google Maps took the market seriously. All the cars sold in India with installed navigators use MapmyIndia’s products. However, on the consumer front — where one uses maps on one’s phones to find the best route from work to home — Google Maps has left it far behind. The best example of the divide is seen in taxi aggregators Ola and Uber: while the companies use MapmyIndia to track the cars, their drivers use Google Maps.

The Vermas launched their revamped consumer mobile app, with all the bells and whistles of an always-on product, on February 5 and showcased it at the Auto Expo. They are re-entering a space they had vacated five years back. Although a free version of the MapmyIndia app was available on different platforms, it never had the full features. Google Maps had a free run while MapmyIndia was focused only on businessto-business applications.

IT and digital sector analyst Sanchit Vir Gogia of Greyhound Research says MapmyIndia’s new app is already “too late” and should have come into play a few years ago.

Google On the Way

What has forced the Vermas to look at an alternative strategy now is the way data consumption has changed in India. Data has got faster, and cheaper. Having the entire map installed on a device has ceased to be an advantage. Meanwhile, Google Maps has pressed down the accelerator.

Around the time the 60-something Vermas were taking a little ride in their Jaguar, Google Maps’ young program manager, Anal Ghosh, 33, was in Gurgaon, busy hatching new ways to make it more popular. Ghosh, based in Hyderabad, was visiting the Google offices at Unitech Signature Towers for the week. He is clearly the man setting the pace in consumer navigation in India.

Google Maps has a long relationship with India, and crucial developments started out of India a decade ago under a different leader, the then Google India CEO Lalitesh Katragadda, and Ghosh is keen Google Maps continues to learn from the country.

For instance, in India, Google Maps focuses on landmark-based navigation, using Metro pillars, intersection names or water tanks as pointers to finding places. Ghosh says: “Addresses are not very regularised in India and houses may not be numbered or arranged as per their numbers. So in India we find addresses through landmarks.” After the success in India, it has been launched globally.

For two years now, Google Maps have focused on the Indian market and are testing new developments. Last December, it started to promote its traffic navigation applications with a major outdoor campaign. For Indians using smartphones with less than 1GB RAM, it has also launched a lighter version of the app called Google Maps Go. Ghosh told ET M a g a z i n e that the company is trying to make Google Maps more current. He cites the example of how during city marathons, Google Maps traces the routes when the race is on. Or, how Google Maps worked with Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi during his Bharat Yatra to protest child abuse and exploitation last year. His route was mapped and anyone wanting to join the yatra could find out Satyarthi’s exact location and route.

In Delhi, Hyderabad and Kolkata, information given by the police are constantly used for updating traffic navigation. It is also possible to book an Ola or Uber from the Google Maps app. Soon it will be possible to book tables at restaurants, order food or find a nearby public toilet. In Kolkata, Google Maps has tied up with the state government’s transport agency to track buses. “The trackers had been installed in government buses but were not being used.” says Ghosh. Now, it is possible to search for a public bus in Kolkata and know when it will arrive at a particular bus stop using Google Maps.

If that is a lot to catch up with, the Vermas at MapmyIndia have their own innovations. For instance, the company has already mapped all postal addresses in India. And it has gone on to develop a system called eLOC, which creates a code for every address.

MapmyIndia is currently in a pilot project with India Post for mapping out a particular areas with its eLOC system.

At its core, MapmyIndia still remains a B2B application, which started with mapping out distribution territories for Coca-Cola back in the 1990s, and does similar work for Flipkart or Amazon today.

It also has a hardware and software play and customises solutions while Google Maps is a consumer products linked to its search and generates revenues through advertisements.

In spite of their differences, the latest moves by the two show that the business model of each is getting closer to the other. MapmyIndia is preparing for a consumer play with its new online app, offering traffic updates on its systems integrated in cars and considering an advertising play as well. Meanwhile, Google Maps have opened up for B2B revenues, offering 10 different types of application programming interface (APIs) related to maps, navigation, places, businesses etc to buyers who would like to develop their own offerings.

Mapping the Country

The story of digitally mapping India and Google’s learnings from the country would not be complete without Katragadda, who joined the company in 2002. The man who defined the map’s past is now evangelising its future too.

It was 2004, still early days for Google Maps in India, and Katragadda was stumped by the costs of mapping India. There were no models from similar markets either. He remembers how a map of Kenya that he acquired at the time had just one road on it.

Katragadda and his colleagues innovated in India, moving away from the expensive method of mapping with a GPS truck covering all the roads, and instead used satellite imagery, which was becoming more and more easily available, and an in-house mapping application called MapMaker that converted satellite images to maps with the help of on the ground volunteers.

It was so successful that Google adopted the model for its mapping work across emerging markets. It was launched first in Southeast Asia, two weeks ahead of India where the methodology was developed.

At that time, Katragadda and his team tried to speak to Indian government bodies — there are at least a dozen of them working on different kinds of maps (See “Mapping Network”). The talks were not really fruitful as government bodies, although sitting on a wealth of information, do not move fast enough.

The Indian National Cartographic Association (INCA), based in Hyderabad, has more than 80 members and at least a dozen bodies are involved in creating different maps of India — forests, seas, geology, etc. Raghu Venkataman, president of INCA and a deputy director at the National Remote Sensing Centre of ISRO, says the scope of mapping has increased way beyond initial mandates to now cover geographical information systems and remote sensing.

He says, “Besides topographic maps that provide terrain details and broad land use and land cover features, there is a need for thematic maps that address various requirements such as hydrology, geology, forestry, agriculture crops , plantations, soils, wastelands, water bodies etc. Such maps are prepared using remote sensing data and visual or digital image analysis techniques in conjunction with field level information. Therefore the scope of INCA has extended beyond conventional cartography and currently encompasses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing.”

With expanding scope come newer possibilities. Katragadda, for instance, is evangelising about the virtues of maps in ensuring property rights in India; it involves tracking down every plot of land in the country and having it digitally mapped and their ownerships determined (See “Maps Can Make a Real Difference in Protecting Property Rights”).

That is why MapmyIndia’s project to map all addresses in the country and assign each of them an eLOC number excites Katragadda. “If they manage to map all addresses in India it can be of great help.”

Taking on Google

Katragadda says it is possible to compete with his erstwhile employer, Google, as long as a competitor has an excellent product and manages to keep it free.

Rakesh Verma of MapmyIndia says he is doing exactly that — he has a product that is better than Google Maps and is now making it free as well. He says he is bringing reliability to the table, and claims that with every address mapped, MapmyIndia would be a far better option for finding an address than the landmark-based system created by Google Maps.

Of course, there is the question of competing with the monetary might of a global giant that virtually owns internet search, email and consumer maps.

Andreas Ekstrom, renowned Swedish futurist for the digital world, points out that the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon are unique as monopolies in the history of business. “Unlike traditional monopolies, these companies have an endless supply of money and can buy out anyone that comes up as a competition.”

Ekstrom feels that while there are good examples of people competing with the might of a Google or a Facebook, he has not seen a good business plan based around maps yet (See interview, “I have yet to see a strong business model around maps”).

While both Verma and Ghosh would like to counter that, there are other analysts who feel maps have a future as a business.

Gogia of Greyhound Research is of the opinion that while MapmyIndia has a definite place in the ecosystem, they should have been on the app earlier. “They have lost a few critical years, but growth possibilities are huge. Mapping remote parts of India even as ecommerce and other businesses expand across the country clearly presents a business case. Pin code integration is something that has not been done by Google, and MapmyIndia has an advantage,” Gogia adds.

He also stresses on the “Indian face” advantage that MapmyIndia enjoys, especially with government projects — he refers, in this aspect, to Paytm, which has the backing of Alibaba but cannot be successful in India without the face of Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

Gogia worries about something else — a perceived lack of aggression on the part of MapmyIndia. For Verma, however, it makes sense to move with caution. “I learnt two lessons early. One, no one will protect us, and two, we will have to find our own funds,” says Verma.

The company has preferred to bring in strategic players as investors rather than financial investors. (See MapmyIndia Ownership). It has also refused buyout offers from Google itself as well as Yahoo.

Verma is in no mood to give up and says diversification of MapmyIndia is a defence against a takeover. He has little to worry right now. MapmyIndia is looking out for inorganic growth opportunities, and possibly expansion to markets outside India.

Acquisitions can wait. For Verma, the first battle will be to establish MapmyIndia with its new online avatar, and demonstrate that it can find its online use case too and survive alongside Google Maps.

Suman Layak

ETM 25FEB18