The Government of India’s mission for an Aatmanirbhar Bharat has seen a lot of technological advancements happen in the country, the most prominent of them being the sudden rise of ISRO, one of the biggest space agencies in the world. India has been striving to achieve technological independence as well, trying to reduce its reliance on companies like Google and Apple (with many startups banding to create home grown alternatives). Today, MapmyIndia has taken a major step in that direction, announcing a partnership with ISRO to provide an indigenous alternative to Google Maps and Earth.
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. The mapping technology company claims to have 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.
ISRO too has seen a rapid rise to the top in the last few years, and now stands amongst some of the biggest space agencies in the world. It will bring its vast constellation of satellites to the partnership, allowing MapmyIndia to provide satellite imagery and earth observation for all of India.
“Through the combined partnership with ISRO, MapmyIndia’s end user maps, apps and services will now integrate with ISRO’s huge catalogue of satellite imagery and earth observation data, and would be a much better, more detailed and comprehensive, as well as privacy-centric, hyper local and indigenous mapping solution for Indians, compared to foreign map apps and solutions,” Rohan Verma, CEO and Executive Director of MapmyIndia said in a LinkedIn post.
MapmyIndia says that its Google Maps alternative will reflect the true sovereignty of the country, depicting India’s borders as per Government of India. Moreover, it will also alleviate the concern for privacy that comes with the use of Google Maps, as Google is notorious for tracking user data in hopes of facilitating targeted ads.
“MapmyIndia has an ethical point of view against advertising led business models of such companies, and hence, does not have an advertising business model. By using MapmyIndia maps and applications instead of the foreign map apps, users can better protect their privacy,” MapMyIndia said.
