Mobility start-up Ola acquired GeoSpoc, a Pune-based provider of geospatial services, on Tuesday, in an undisclosed deal.
With this buyout, GeoSpoc co-founder Dhruva Rajan and his team of scientists and engineers are expected to join Ola to develop technologies that will make mobility accessible, sustainable, personalised, and convenient across shared and personal vehicles, as per a post shared by the company.
On the rationale, Ola said, new mobility would see profound changes in the way people move and new vehicle form factors and modes of transport would transform day-to-day lives of people. These fundamental changes would require investments in next-gen technologies, including location and geospatial technologies, and advancements in satellite imagery conversion into real-time maps as well as 3D, HD and vector maps, the ride-hailing firm said.
“Multi-modal transportation options will need geospatial intelligence to understand the unique benefits of each option and provide suggestions accordingly,” said Bhavish Aggarwal chairman and Group CEO adding maps would need to consider a three-dimensional view of the world as aerial mobility models such as drones become more mainstream.
As shared and personal mobility penetrate deeper to cover 50-100% of India’s population in the coming years, maps would need to improve in a variety of ways. Accurate and rich maps with high user context should be available to the population beyond the first 100 million users, he stated.
According to Mr. Aggarwal, maps would also help in incorporating near real time satellite imagery to provide a better understanding of road quality, as well as improvements such as avoiding poorly lit streets at night for safety — even if it is a faster route.
“Autonomous driving will need HD and 3D maps which will offer superior visualization, dynamic real time updates based on road, traffic and weather conditions,” he further added.
Enhanced geospatial services would also go a long way in improving urban planning including road networks, better public transportation and pre-empt congestion spots.
“We have the data and the expertise to build utilising our deep understanding of consumer movements as well as our massive network of 2,3 and 4Ws that offer unprecedented geospatial details. We can layer this data with new sources such as satellite imagery and visual feeds from our network on-ground to build ‘Living Maps’ that embody the changing landscape of our world,” he said in a company post.