MapMyIndia

++ Location Based Services (LBS) ++

This is the latest buzz word in the press, mobile, telecom and computing space. Services that can be provided to the mass market, consumer space based on the location of a person, event or item. So what is location, it is the ability to identify a place based on other places or in our lingo, it is the coordinates (latitude and longitude) of a place.

Latitude and Longitude is something one reads up in geography and most likely forgets about it when one grows up and enter main stream society, but these are the numbers that location based engineers live by. They convert these numbers into meaningful names and attach these numbers to the names of place. Thus Mumbai, Patna, Delhi, Chennai, Salem, Kohima, Guwahati, Indore, Rajkot, Surat, Jaipur, Ambala, Srinagar, Leh, Ladakh etc have a specific coordinate match with their names. The coordinate match results into what is popularly known as Maps, be it on the print medium, electronic medium or conceptual medium.

Maps are what is the cornerstone of LBS and will form an important part of all advertising as it becomes more specific and to-the-point, like what google did to advertising on the internet (search specific). Maps is what will tell an enterprise, that a particular asset is being kept at a particular place, or a potential consumer of his/her goods is standing in front of his/her store. Advertising will be location specific. Fusion of various technologies over time will enable this specific mass customization. This now leads us into maps and how the Indian marketplace will work in this area, which is new to the entire world, except maybe Japan.

Map

There has been a lot of talk about creating maps and geographic locators India something similar to what Google, Yahoo and Mapquest did for the US. Mapping in India is coming of age with various players and companies trying to create map books, store locators, GPS driving directions etc. For the longest of time, the concept of standardized data repository did not exist in Nepal space. Hence Maps were created but only for official purposes and not much thought and effort was spent in detailing and clarifying the same.Over the past 2-3 years, with the advent of the Internet and exposure to international mapping sites, tourism etc, there has been a very big rise on the advent of mapping by a large number of companies. There are two aspects to mappings:1. Collecting the space satellite images from various satellites roaming over the Indian landscape. This is a very costly endeavor.2. Translating these satellite images into meaningful color coded maps, which day to day users can relate to and use

Obtaining these images is not that difficult as there are hundreds of satellites out there in space, but converting this raw digital image into usable data is EXTREMELY difficult and time consuming. Hence this process consumes a large sum of money. Anyways with the coming of GPS and other location based marketing, sales, segmentation companies are spending money to build these large repositories of data and tying the same to other demographic information such as census, household income etc.

Indian Directions and Roads - Issues and ProblemsThe biggest hurdle when building geographic and mappings solutions for India is the lack of a standardized postal naming convention. Unlike the US or Japan, most of the Indian addresses are not easily mappable. E.g. A persons address might be Dr.Kumar, Sona Road, Patna, Bihar - 1. Now Sona Road might be a 2 mile road with 10,000 people living in the neighborhood, but since Dr.Kumar might be a well known local person, the postman will be able to deliver the mail to his address. From a geo-coding or mapping point of view this is a nightmare. Unless someone physically goes with a GPS device and maps out the location of the Dr.Kumar's residence, it will be impossible to place him on a map.

A method to this madness is to have the ability to click your house's / business position on an existing internet map, such that you can point out the location of your residence to anyone who needs this information via the internet as a collaborative tool.----

MapMyIndia(Company)

[http://www.mapmyindia.com MapMyIndia] is a company that pioneers the Location based services space, be it advanced web applications to get maps and directions in India, GPS navigation on cars and mobile phones or be it map data to pty maps, street maps, route maps, driving directions, GPS instruments, eLocations and a business locator for India.

Mapmyindia.com has been created by a New Delhi, India based company. This site was rated one of the most innovative companies by its peers in the Information Technology Industry. The Mapmyindia site is the web front end of the underlying data available with CE Info. The company over the last decade and a half has built a library of high resolution satellite images, which it is now displaying through its weMapMyIndia's Uniqueness 1. The company over the last 14 odd years has physically sent survey teams and other 3rd party companies to obtain Lat-Long for places of interest. This gives Mapmyindia a head start when compared to other mapping companies. The European and American companies do not have to so deploy such operations when building mapping data.2. Using the unique feature of e-location one can map out his/her residence on the internet specific to India. This is a first for India and first for mapping sites across the world.3. Common API structure to hook into the website and leverage on the map information to build internal maps or intranet maps of different states, cities etc.

MapMyIndia's Competitor The primary competition to [http://www.mapmyindia.com Mapmyindia.com] will come from companies like Tele-atlas and Navqtech. These companies dominate the international mappings and GIS space across both Europe and US.

External Citations for MapmyIndia

[http://www.google.com Search for MapmyIndia on Google to see various citations] [http://www.techgadgets.in/gps/2007/06/in-car-navigation-introduced-by-mapmyindia-in-india/ Tech Gadgets review] [http://www.webyantra.net/2007/11/05/mapmyindias-gps-based-in-car-navigation-device/ Blog on MMI] [http://www.indiaprwire.com/pressrelease/information-technology/200712216354.htm World GPS Businessman of the Year]