ISRO has established a partnership with MapmyIndia for the development of fully indigenous mapping portal and geospatial services. The new platform is designed to compete with the likes of Google Maps and Bing Maps. The latest development is part of the Government’s move to throw open the space sector to private firms.
Even though MapmyIndia currently exists, the app will now make use of ISRO’s satellite services to provide accurate mapping services. Going forward, Google will face tough competition from MapmyIndia as majority of Indians will make use of the app citing Atmanirbhar Bharat.
Commenting on the development, MapmyIndia CEO Rohan Verma disclosed that the partnership will combine the power of ISRO’s catalog of satellite imagery and earth observation data coupled with MayMyIndia’s digital maps and technologies. He described the development as path breaking milestone in the quest to become Atmanirbhar Bharat.
The partnership enables ISRO to jointly identify and build holistic geospatial solutions by leveraging each observation datasets, NavIC, web services including APIs available with MaymyIndia, VEDAS, MOSDAC, and Bhuvan geoportals. Verma added that MayMyIndia is a responsible local Indian company, which ensures that the maps reflect the true sovereignty of the country. The company will display India’s borders as per the instructions of Government of India. Moreover, the servers are located in India, thus ruling out the possibility of data privacy and security.
According to Verma, people can make use of their map services to protect privacy instead of offering free maps with targeted advertising. The app will not allow invasion of user privacy and auctioning user location and data movement. The upcoming app and portal will give tough competition to Google Maps with one billion monthly users.
