[Exclusive] As it battles Google Maps, MapmyIndia banks on patience and expertise

Google Maps has met its toughest competition yet globally. MappIs, developed by Indian navigation company MapmyIndia, is topping download charts on application stores. As timing would have it, the Google Play Store downloads counter for Mappls ticked past 5 million at the time HT was having a conversation with Rohan Verma, CEO of MapmyIndia.

“I can say we are reaching out to just less than 10 million users directly. Our API is built into apps such as Amazon’s Alexa, PhonePe and Paytm. So, our maps in that sense touch hundreds of millions of users every day,” Verma says.

A snapshot of the last two months pegs Mappls regularly leading downloads in the navigation category on Google’s Play Store for Android phones. That gives Mappls headway against Google Maps, an app preloaded on Android phones, and one of the reasons for an antitrust verdict against Google in India.

This is collectively a pivotal moment for the Indian tech company, which is eyeing expansion in more countries, in the next few years.

Foundations for a successful business

His parents Rashmi and Rakesh Verma had founded MapmyIndia in 1995. The company has been in the business of navigation, much longer than Google, that way. “My parents had envisioned then that as much as 80% of all our data will eventually have a location component,” Verma says.

They saw the future of data much before smartphones came along.

MapmyIndia launched online maps in 2004, a year before Google Maps, in many countries. But for Google, monopolistic contours for Android worked globally, as the then emerging crop of Android phones gained popularity in the late 2000s.

It has been a battle, one of perseverance for Verma. Mappls is just one part of MapmyIndia’s navigational portfolio, which includes mapping data, solutions for businesses, navigation systems for cars, APIs or application programming layer to work with platforms such as Alexa, AI tools and analytics.

There are solutions for governments too, such as an emergency system that works with disaster response agencies to analyse water level and predict changes using AI.

MapmyIndia raised $15 million in funding, before the public listing in 2021, which was oversubscribed by 155 times. The company confirms ₹124 crores have been infused into the company through equity.

“We have no debt and have more than ₹500 crores in cash reserves. It’s all profitable, and the money we get from (business) customers is reinvested,” he says.

Balancing function and features

MappIs, across Android and iOS, includes unique features, the highlight being 3D junction views with specific lane guidance, such as whether to proceed on to a flyover or take the road beside it. There are also speed limit alerts, trip toll and fuel cost estimates, alerts for upcoming speed breakers, sharp curves, and even potholes.

Google Maps, or indeed third-party map apps including Here’s WeGo or NNG’s iGo, do not have much of this extended functionality set.

A unique layer of real-time data in MappIs, which gives it a significant advantage over Google Maps, comes from traffic police departments in Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Rajkot in Gujarat, for live route and road closure updates.

“On Twitter, the police can post the same update but it’s not really actionable. Here, they actually feed it straight into the maps that a particular road is going to be closed for VIP movement. The navigation automatically routes you around that,” Verma points out.

During the recent floods in Himachal and Delhi, for instance, HT noticed layers for time-bound, localised information such as water logging, flooding, road damages and road blockages. This is in addition to live weather that contextually overlays your destination, at the time of travel.

It is often challenging to balance stability of core functionality, with new functionality regularly. MapmyIndia’s approach is clear – basics cannot be compromised with.

“The core has to work. Other things are add-ons. We have to be very careful with our product. This is the ethos with which we have been building it, to make sure that the core navigation experience is sorted,” he says.

MapmyIndia does its own mapping across India. There is a 1,200-member strong team that has mapped 3.3 million sq km, 6.6 million km of road as well as more than 50 million places or points of interest. “There are also about 420 million geotagged photos, videos and panoramas. Literally, we have scanned or mapped India digitally and we continue to do that from vehicles, and now from drones,” Verma says.

This data is in addition to satellite imagery. The drone imagery, specifically, is used for collecting height data of buildings, physical structures and natural features such as mountains. This not only helps develop 3D layers on the maps we use, but also for predictive AI calculations, such as predicting the overflow of a river as it flows through.

Breaking the monopoly

Mappls’s momentum coincidentally follows an antitrust order by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) in March. The CCI imposed fines twice on the tech giant, including a ₹1,337.76 crore penalty for anti-competitive practices with Android, including forcing phone makers to preload Google apps and thereby restricting choice of alternative apps.

By forcing phone makers to preload their apps, Google unlocked a direct route to a demographic that became regular Google Maps users. A sort of default choice.

“A part of the reason we are doing well is consumers got to know that Google was monopolizing, and not giving them a choice,” Verma says. He is looking at a dark cloud, and its silver lining. The target, an estimated 200 million regular Google Maps users, undoubtedly a steep climb.

HT notes the new guidelines for Android, wherein an option must made available for users to choose default apps for navigation, web browser, email and search, are yet to be implemented even on recently launched phones.

“We are yet to see that happen. India doesn’t have a large handset OEMs. The popular ones are mostly Chinese, one Korean, with Apple being American. Nonetheless, there are global relationships they have to maintain,” Verma makes sense of sluggish pace.

The changes, when they are finally implemented on phones sold in India, will significantly change the structure of Android. Numbers necessitated regulation. Android’s market share in India was 94.64% at the end of June, according to research firm StatCounter. Apple’s iOS for iPhone follows at a distant second, with 4.18% share.

It is a similar story of an uptick in fortunes for Mappls, on Apple App Store as well, where it now regularly holds the top spot among all free apps. Being consistently listed ahead of WhatsApp, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) over the past few months, is no mean feat.

Apple Maps, which is Apple’s own navigation app, uses MapmyIndia’s maps as its foundation. There is no scope for friction with Mappls, Verma insists.

“Apple requires maps to make the whole OS operate in a very seamless way. I think for them it is to create location intelligence for contextual awareness, such as in Apple Photos, where you can see your photos spread on a map, or Find My,” he says.

The strengths of either work well, in sync. “In that sense, Apple derives a lot of value from working with us. I’m saying that a lot of OEMs could get a lot of interesting benefits from us,” he says, with the hope that Android phone makers will soon implement the mandatory app choice guidelines.

Carmakers’ formula for innovation

There has been a steady increase in availability of ‘connected car’ tech, in the last couple of years. Verma believes cars built-in SIM cards for data connectivity, enable innovation. Carmakers are using advanced mapping alongside connected tech to enable driver guidance functionality, such as notifications for school zones, sharp curves and road speed limits.

In 2022, 1.9 million new cars were shipped in India with MapmyIndia’s navigation systems built-in. The year before, 1.3 million cars. They provide navigation for Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai, Mahindra, MG Motors, BMW and Mercedes Benz.

Is Mappls doing well, a sign for app developers struggling to break through? Verma believes breaking the monopoly is a good start.

“Even if you had made something better, you were being held back. This is MapmyIndia’s true story,” he says. “It’s a good thing for app developers now to try to build a better search engine or a better email service. It’s great for consumers. Choice is great,” he adds.