ISRO, MapmyIndia join hands to take on Google Maps, to offer fully indigenous mapping portal

Indian Research Organisation and location and navigation techlogy solutions provider MapmyIndia anunced an initiative to partner toger to offer India's best, and fully indigeus, mapping portal and geospatial services.

It combines power of MapmyIndia's digital maps and techlogies with ISRO's catalogue of satellite imry and earth observation data, according to MapmyIndia's CEO and Excutive Director, Rohan Verma.

He termed it a path-breaking milestone in India's journey towards 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat', wherein Indian users would t be dependent on foreign organisations for maps, navigation and geospatial services, and lever me-in-India solutions inste. "You don't need Goo*le Maps/Earth any longer", Verma said in heline in an article on LinkedIn.

According to ISRO, Department of (DoS) -- ISRO comes under it -- has joined hands with MapmyIndia to combine ir geospatial expertise and build holistic solutions by leveraging ir geoportals. DoS entered into an MoU with geospatial techlogy company CE Info Systems Pvt Ltd, which owns MapmyIndia, on Thursday.

Under partnership, combined geospatial expertise of DoS and CE Info Systems would be leverd through ir respective Geoportals, according to Bengaluru-hequartered ISRO.

collaboration will enable m to jointly identify and build holistic geospatial solutions utilising earth observation datasets, 'NavIC', Web Services and APIs (application programming interface) available in MapmyIndia, 'Bhuvan', 'VEDAS' and 'MOSDAC' geoportals, ncy said in a statement.

Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) called NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation, is India's own navigation system, developed by ISRO. Bhuvan is national geo-portal developed and hosted by ISRO comprising geospatial data, services and tools for analysis.

VEDAS (VisualisatiofEarthobservationDataandArchivalSystem) is an online geoprocessing platform using optical, microwave, rmal and hyperspectral EO data covering applications particularly meant for acemia, research and problem solving, according to ISRO.

MOSDAC (Meteorological and Oceagraphic Satellite Data Archival Centre)is a data repository for all meteorological missions of ISRO and deals with wear related information, oceagraphy and tropical water cycles. Verma said re are many reasons why Indians are better off with an indigeus solution for maps and geospatial services.

"MapmyIndia, being a responsible, local, Indian company, ensures that its maps reflect true sovereignty of country, depicting Indias borders as per Government of India, and hosts its maps in India," he said.

Through combined partnership with ISRO, MapmyIndias end user maps, apps and services will w integrate with ISROs huge catalogue of satellite imry and earth observation data, a MapmyIndia statement said.

It would be a much better, more detailed and comprehensive, as well as privacy-centric, hyper local and indigeus mapping solution for Indians, compared to foreign map apps and solutions, it said. Verma said foreign mapping solutions come with a lot of hidden costs.

For example, foreign search engines and companies claim to offer "free" maps, but in reality y make money by targeting same users with vertising based on inving user privacy and auctioning those users private location and movement data," he claimed. "This should be very alarming to all citizens".

"On or hand, MapmyIndia has an ethical point of view against vertising led business models of such companies, and hence, does t have an vertising business model.By using MapmyIndia maps and applications inste of foreign map apps, users can better protect ir privacy," he said.

"sustainable and direct, clean business model" ensures that MapmyIndias maps and apps can be kept free of cost as well as free of s for users, according to him.

"MapmyIndias maps cover all 7.5 lakh vills, 7500+ cities at street and building-level, connected by all 63 lakh kilometres of ro network pan India and within cities, in total providing maps for an unparalleled 3+ crore places across India," company statement said.