Department of Space (DoS) – Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) comes under it – has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with CE Info Systems, which owns MapmyIndia. Together they will build a new fully indigenous, mapping portal and with geospatial services for India. The portal will make use of MapmyIndia’s detailed Indian maps and ISRO’s catalogue of satellite imagery and earth observation data.
MapmyIndia’s CEO and Executive Director Rohan Verma stated that this is a stride towards Aatmanirbhar Bharat, which would allow Indians to not be dependent on foreign organisations for maps, navigation and geospatial services.
The collaboration will enable both to identify and build holistic geospatial solutions, using earth observation datasets, NavIC, Web Services and APIs. All of these are already available in MapmyIndia, Bhuvan, VEDAS and MOSDAC geoportals.
NavIC is India’s own navigation system, developed by ISRO and Bhuvan is a national geo-portal. VEDAS is an online geoprocessing platform and MOSDAC is a data repository for all the meteorological missions.
“MapmyIndia, being a responsible, local, Indian company, ensures that its maps reflect the true sovereignty of the country, depicting India’s borders as per Government of India, and hosts its maps in India,” said Verma in a LinkedIn post.
MapmyIndia told PTI, this partnership will help them in providing users with “much better, more detailed and comprehensive, as well as privacy-centric, hyper local and indigenous mapping solution.”
Verma states that all foreign mapping solutions come with a lot of hidden costs, as they provide maps for free and then target them with local advertisement to make money, thus invading user privacy. MapmyIndia does not target users with ads and respects its users privacy.
MapmyIndia currently covers 7.5 lakh villages, 7500+ cities, 63 lakh kilometres of road network and over 3 crore places across India, according to the company.
