ISRO,MapmyIndia unites to bring Indian made navigation app

As the Indian government is promoting Twitter-alike Indian made Koo, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and MapmyIndia, the navigation solutions provider, have joined hands to offer an indigenous mapping solution to take on Google Maps.

MapmyIndia CEO and Executive Director, Rohan Verma said that both the organisations would come with an India made mapping portal and geospatial services. He went on to add that the collaboration will boost Aatmanirbhar Bharat, which will mean that users in India in future can rely on a country made solution and not a service designed outside India. “You don’t need Goo*le Maps/Earth any longer”, Verma in a LinkedIn post.

On Friday, a PTI report confirmed that the Department of Space (DoS), under which ISRO comes, signed an MoU with geospatial technology company CE Info Systems Pvt Ltd, which MapmyIndia owns.

As part of the deal, ISRO and MapmyIndia would develop solutions by leveraging their geoportals and work on enhancing geospatial expertise.

Elaborating about the partnership, ISRO in a statement said, “The collaboration will enable them to jointly identify and build holistic geospatial solutions utilising the earth observation datasets, “NavIC”, Web Services and APIs (application programming interface) available in MapmyIndia, “Bhuvan”, “VEDAS” and “MOSDAC” geoportals.”

The space agency confirmed that R Umamaheswaran, Scientific Secretary, ISRO, signed the MoU on behalf of DOS and Rakesh Verma, CMD, CE Info Systems Pvt Ltd signed from the company side.

ISRO has already developed NavIC (also called Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System or IRNSS) which is Navigation with Indian Constellation, an India made navigation system.

“Through the combined partnership with ISRO, MapmyIndia’s end-user maps, apps and services will now integrate with ISRO’s huge catalogue of satellite imagery and earth observation data and would be a much better, more detailed and comprehensive, as well as privacy-centric, hyper-local and indigenous mapping solution for Indians, compared to foreign map apps and solutions. Users will be able to see in MapmyIndia’s maps and services, all of India from a bird’s eye point of view, and also benefit hugely from the various map-based analytics and insights about the weather, pollution, agricultural output, land-use changes, flood and landslide disasters etc.,” Verma talked about the partnership in a lengthy post on LinkedIn.

“MapmyIndia’s maps and APIs will enrich ISRO’s geoportals, empowering Indian scientists, academia, researchers and government organisations with the best of India’s satellite imagery, earth observation data and digital map data and advanced geospatial technologies, all combined together in a fully indigenous Aatmanirbhar ISRO-MapmyIndia platform,” Verma said.