Antrix Corp, the commercial arm of India's space agency is looking to tap a growing opportunity to sell map data to local companies to provide services for building highways, helping truck firms to firm up routes and car firms map cities for their consumers.
So far, the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA), the Hyderabad based unit that captures and analyses maps captured by India's fleet of earth observation satellites has been providing map data to Indian customers.
But a global explosion of private satellite companies that have launched earth observation satellites and have successfully built profitable business models is forcing Antrix to think that it can exploit such an opportunity in India.
Interestingly, Antrix, which started its commercial business by selling map data from its IRS -2 satellite in 1992, has seen its market share dip from US cities and GIS companies due to the arrival of these private satellite operators. The biggest of them is DigitalGlobe, which powers maps on Google Earth and Apple Maps and PlanetLabs, which acquired Google's satellites have captured the market in US and the UK.
"Indian commercial market for remote sensing data is not very much today. Seeing this (global shift), this is going to be a big market in future," Rakesh Sasibhushan, chairman and Managing Director of Antrix Corp said recently.
For this, Antrix is looking to appoint a global consultant who can help it estimate the market opportunity to sell the data to customers.
While India has among the largest constellation of civilian remote sensing satellites, it has so far invested very little on building its digital map database that can be exploited for businesses. NRSA working with state governments provide geographical information system (GIS) mapping services for government programmes.
MapMyIndia, a company has bought mapping data from Isro to build digital maps for specific vertical such as auto, logistics and retail - helping companies to use these maps to connect to their customers and distributors better.
But this is still small.
"There are so many new models that can be discovered using map data. Uber or Ola would not be successful if they did not inform users of their route using a map on their smartphone," says an Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) scientist who did not want to be named. "The country should be progressive in building a commercial model because we already have the map data of the country."
Today, accessing map data of Indian remote sensing satellites is cumbersome and bureaucratic. The remote sensing data policy prohibits high resolution images to be shared to commercial firms and need to go through a screening process. Any commercialisation will also require a relook at the policy, says Rakesh.
"If there is an opportunity, we have to see in what way we have to enter this (local commercial map) market," he said.