Location Based Apps for India

Soon several social and biz apps will start leveraging (x,y,z, t, photo/video/other info from remote sensor)!! Time for GIS to come into mainstream and limelight!!

Facebook.com, Apple, Foursquare.com, twitter.com etc all all keen to track your location the moment you use the app from your mobile device. More and more will follow and eventually every app will be trying to get your (x,y at specific time). This is extremely powerful information and will be used in more than one ways by companies. Need I elaborate that? Some other day..

How many LBS apps or apps that use "location" exist in India? I will try and find out. If you know of few interesting ones, please let me know.

Manoj

R-APDRP - Will it succeed?

R-APDRP is one of the key projects that has consumed lot of "discussion time" amongst GIS professional in India. Even on my blog, you are finding it's mention again and again!!

I found this very interesting student paper where Ambuj Lal has done a "Review of APDRP and RAPDRP"

Ambuj has made very interesting & relevant comment: "If R-APDRP fails and most likely, it will, the failure would squarely rest on MoP and the PFC, who have goofed up the entire execution, stating that if we give utilities the right to think and act on their own, the projects will fail. PGCIL which was the earlier consultant failed in APDRP-I. A set of 5-6 consultant panels in APDRP-II or R-APDRP also has not had much success. In essence then, the reason for the failure of R-APDRP would be attributed to the wrong strategy and approach of MoP and PFC both on technical and contractual issues and empaneling of vendors and the confusing specifications that has been made, with no teeth to consultant, resulting in all Utilities facing the dire consequences of grant becoming loan, and thereby eroding their already weak financial position"

While Ambuj Lal's paper clearly indicates that he has done extensive study and analysis to draw final conclusions, several other seasoned professionals have also drawn their "conclusions" on why with R-APDRP fail. Fact is that almost everyone is "struggling" and more often then once, there is specific mention of "GIS" as one of the key contributing factors for failures of R-APDRP.

But let me ask you - what do you think is required to make R-APDRP (and more specifically GIS survey) successful?

Manoj

PS: I strongly believe that the current situation can be turned around. What it needs is for us to focus on how can it be corrected then on why will it fail!! This is an exceptional opportunity for GIS industry to develop additional skill sets and position itself for a brighter future!

If Obama can find Osama Using Geo-Spatial Technolgy, why can't you map, track, monitor and kill your competition?

It's interesting to note that Geospatial Technology played significant role in tracking and monitoring OBL. Gepatial Technology was used for:

1. Creating three-dimensional renderings of the Abbottabad compounds using imagery and laser-based sensing devices--laser radar, or ladar.

2. Analyzing data from a sophisticated next-generation drone that kept watch on the compound before, during, and after the raid. The drone was an RQ-170 built by Lockheed Martin.

3. Helping the Joint Special Operations Command create mission simulators for the pilots who flew the helicopters into the breach

4. Providing to the CIA and other policymakers assessments of the number of people who lived inside the compound, their heights and genders.

How was this possible? Apart from normal mapping - remotely identification of what an object or a building is made out of, conducted sophisticated pattern analysis of human characteristics, like gait and body size, carried out facial recognition using sophisticated software and used hyperspectral sensors to get information below the surface!!

So I must ask this simple question to businesses in India - If Obama can find Osama Using Geo-Spatial Technolgy, why can't you map, track, monitor and kill your competition? You will need just a fraction of all the sophisticated techniques mentioned above!

What Ails Enterprise GIS in India

Folks: Sorry for staying out of scene. Don't get time to do so...

However, I have been regularly channelizing my thought on Indian GIS market through GeoSpatial Today (www.Geospatialtoday.com)

One of my earlier post http://manojmisra.blogspot.com/2010/01/why-is-enterprise-gis-implementation.html , i converted into an article.

To check the magazine version - check the following link:

http://emag.geospatialtoday.com/Index.aspx?issue=issue14 Check page 32-33

Manoj

Why is Enterprise GIS implementation penetration low in India?

Back in action after few months!!! Reason, I will be visiting GIS India show tomorrow to get reconnected with GIS community and I realized that the blog is not updated.!

Sometime back, someone asked to to give my views on Indian GIS market. I decided to analyze the reasons for low implementation of enterprise wide GIS systems in India - specially private sector.

Indian Geospatial Market is on the verge of a humongous growth. We are witnessing huge growth spurts; companies are bagging projects that are valued more than the total annual revenue of company. In the early 1990s, most Indian GIS companies relied on outsourced business from overseas market with US accounting for bulk of business followed by UK/Europe. Indian business used to account for less that 10 per cent of the overall business of large companies. However, trends are changing and so is the equation as business from the Indian market is increasing and what is noticeable is a fine geographic mix of business. It is a welcome change, albeit a bit slow.

GIS, in India, is coming of age. Gone are the days when it used to be a fashion statement and people would harp on how governments use GIS. Now the momentum has is picking up and all the rhetoric is transforming into reality This is largely attained due to government focus on use of GIS and large initiatives like R-APDRP and NLRMP but this is just the start. US GIS market had seen growth in 1980s on account of parcel digitizing (sort of subset of our NLRMP) and in 1990s on account of large AM/FM conversion projects. For India, both growth shots are administered at the same time. Landscape of competing companies is also changing very quickly with companies like HCL, Infosys and Wipro showing interest in Indian GIS projects. TCS and Satyam were trying to use GIS from the early years, while TCS is getting more and more active, Mahnidra Satyam still needs to find its feet in Indian market. In addition to that huge number of small companies has also mushroomed.

In true sense, both NRLRM and R-APRDRP projects will give effective results only when an effective enterprise GIS system is deployed by the states. In the private sectors utility companies (Telecom, Power, and Gas) are early adopter of GIS and lot of them will keep on enhancing their enterprise GIS systems. So the industry will witness state of art GIS based enterprise systems in coming years. However, sadly, rest of the private sector is significantly lagging behind in enterprise GIS implementation.

One can argue that implementation of enterprise GIS systems is lagging in India because of economic slowdown around the world. But, this is the time to implement enterprise GIS systems as GIS will help in increasing operational efficiencies. GIS solutions can help organizations overcome their operational challenges and deliver improved profitability. Banks, retailers, realtors, insurers, asset managers, and others seek to understand markets better before embracing GIS for micro and targeting marketing, optimizing business openings and closings, segmenting consumer data, and managing fleets. GIS can visualize, manage, and analyze any business asset (employees, customers, and facilities, all the way to the supply chain network) because it has a place in the world. Over 75 per cent of business data has an address component. Sadly though, the “eco-system” for enterprise system deployment in India is not highly conducive and even though there is lot of ideas on table, implementation is not as cost effective and hence has not gathered momentum.

Reasons for less adoption
There are several reasons for less adoption and implementation of enterprise wide GIS systems in private sector in India, the top two are:
a) Low cost, high quality standard GIS base map
b) India specific Geocoding engine

a) Low cost, high quality standard GIS base map
You need a base map for your GIS enterprise implementation. A base map on top with which company business specific layer or information or assets can be mapped. Sadly though, blame it to less adoption by market or low investment by Indian GIS companies or on Indian government mapping policy, there is no standard national base map that can be used by enterprises and application developers.

Even in R-APDRP projects, base map will be generated by the states from scratch. This is shear wastage of efforts and resources. There was and still is window of opportunity for companies TeleAtlas and Navteq to push their high quality maps as base maps (as derivative product) but with respective acquisitions by TomTom and Nokia, these companies seems to be going slow on government and private sector data sales.
Indian companies like Computer Eyes (MapMayIndia), SatNav, ML Info etc are still trying to crack this market with varied level of success. Google is also creating its own Google Maps but adoption of the data is so far low at enterprise level. Advocacy to use Hybrid map (satellite data merged with limited vector data like prominent landmarks) has still not lost momentum but the fact remains that if there was a single base layer available for organisations that is high quality and low cost, application development for enterprises will gain momentum.
In the present scenario, few of companies get their own base map developed and then over time, the GIS implementation is sub-optimal as the base maps get outdated. Large Telcos in India are using their GIS systems sub-optimally simply because of the base map issue. Or are ending up spending money (like Reliance) to keep them updated.



b) India specific geocoding engine

In UK, using Postcode Address File (PAF) of Royal Mail you can do a building level Geocoding– a feature that is used by numerous organizations for visualization of addresses in GIS. In US, there are numerous commercial geocoders available that provide a street level geocode of any address. For select Metro area, parcel level geocoders are also available. In India, at best you can get locality level match. So if you have to do accurate mapping of your individual consumer database on GIS, that has to be done manually, a huge cost and time deterrent for any enterprise GIS implementation that wants to deal with geographic visualization of the address database.

Not many GIS/product companies have tried to develop an India specific geocoder. Large part of the reason is non standard addressing in India but to some extent it has to do with the fact that we do not have a government data-source as a start point unlike US and UK. While there is a huge initiative taken up by department of post to modernize,, develop a geo-tagged address database this will be a huge effort. One hopes that UID project will map each address and potentially geocoded address database could be developed from the UID database (as a by product, provided each UID is tagged geographically to an address).

There are reports that Google is working on an India specific geo-coder. If the geocoder is available for rest of the industry for developing applications, it will give a huge fillip to the Indian enterprise GIS application development. Tele Atlas and Navteq also has incentive to develop geo-coder (database). Not sure if that's going to happen, given Google moves has put TA and Navteq on back foot!!

In addition to the above two key reason, lack of availability of high quality demographic data in GIS format will probably be third key hindrance in development of enterprise GIS. Essentially you need to free the enterprises for the core issues and challenges of basic GIS data layers for them to focus on their business need and leverage GIS for enterprise efficiency enhancement.
Five years down the line (by 2015) hope is that substantial data (from government departments) may be available for enterprise GIS developers and business to exploit it and develop enterprise GIS applications. So while Indian GIS companies are busy executing R-APDRPs or NLRMPs or other government programs and missions, there is an opportunity for someone to address these basis issues and exploit the so far relatively untapped enterprise GIS systems market in India. Regardless, the Indian GIS future appears extremely bright!!

I look forward to meet with many of you over the GIS India event!! See you at Gurgaon - place that I have got to know really well in last 3 years - as one that has given highest real estate returns in the entire NCR market in last decade!!

Manoj

What motivates blogger? I was missing from action for a while

I was a bit tied up. The core business on real estate information front side, appearance on TV channels, travel, socializing and facebook took most of the time! But I keep on coming back to think about GIS market!! Some investment interest, past friends and contacts keep discussing GIS and I keep on hearing about events/happening on GIS space. Few tit-bits for you:

1. In past I have blogged about routeguru . Looks like these young entrepreneurs are not able to monetize their idea. So the old school has won! Also, I have not seen too many GIS based product start-ups in a while. So you if you come across someone, send me details. But I am still hopeful that the people on whom I have put my bet will succeed.

2. Met with two companies (one survey focused and other GIS solutions focused) last week. Even after their existence for more than 6 years, these folks do not have seizable revenues. Focus - only India market. But both entrepreneurs were bullish about future of the company and satisfied with what they have been able to archive! Confusing signals!!

3. Got call from three survey focused companies. Hmm.. everyone talking about R-APDRP and the recent 400 Cr ($100 million) plus GIS project award . So at what rate it makes sense to do consumer survey? Will such projects be viable? I have some comments on this but will write later. Should I!!! BTW people in general are skeptical but

4. There is some level of interest coming from US/international companies to start business in India. But they are struggling with India positioning !!! (Sorry, can't share much details about these companies. Thanks to industry contacts and blogs, two of the companies have spoken with me but it will be inappropriate for me to reveal any further details.

5. Has lengthy chat about Indian GIS Industry and GIS industry in general with two Indian GIS industry veterans (and my good friends). Both are playing leading roles in their respective companies (and their companies at some point were directly competing with ESRI - but no more). Surprisingly both do not see much future for GIS experts!!! This topic deserves much bigger discussion and separate post!!

6. Met with one of the large user of GIS in India. Let me correct - one of the select companies in private space that have spent money (upward of few million USD) on GIS system. The opening statement - GIS is more of a trouble now. We are not able to use as data quality is really poor!!!

Net - net, looks like nothing much have changed in Indian GIS market. Large contract awards, struggling new companies, not so satisfied large corporates!!

So the opportunity exists.. or is my optimism for industry there simple because I always think positive!! Too much to ponder upon and analyze. Hope I get a chance to do so and come up with a blog that contains facts and analysis!!

Hopefully soon!!

Manoj

IS GIS fashion or Obsession in India?

Election commission in India has adopted GIS in big way. Before the recent general election, I watched an interview of CEC (Chief Election Commissioner) of India about delimitation of parliamentray constituencies. He was referring the use of GIS Software for delimiation as if everyone watching NDTV knew what is GIS!!! It was facinating to see the use of technology that we have profess as OUR baby, now becoming almost pevasive.

NDTV, looks like took a cue from that inteview and was heaving relying on Google Maps to show the election results to its viewers.

But the best piece of new I have save for you goes as follows:

________________________________________________________________

Election Commission to use Census data, GPS to track voters

Delhi Bureau , August 25, 2008 12:25 IST

In an attempt to curb bogus voting and monitor the migration of voters across India, the Election Commission is planning to link the Census data of 2011 with its electoral rolls. The EC then plans to use global positioning system to automatically record the voters' migration or shifting of residence.

A software, developed for this specific purpose, will be demonstrated to the Election Commission by the Registrar General of India at the Nirvachan Sadan.

Once the Census data is made available to the Election Commission, it will be clubbed with the electoral rolls. The GPS chip would be added to the electronic photo identity cards already issued to the voters.

The identity card will enable the Election Commission to record the movement of voters and pinpoint their location at the time of polling.

The ID will also detect bogus voters, said Commission sources said.

The GPS will also cut down the time taken in revising electoral rolls, as it will provide automatic updates on the basis of the voter's location, the sources said.

The RGI, which carries out the Census every decade, agreed to make the necessary changes in the software to facilitate its data's link-up with the electoral rolls.

According to sources, this data would be useful for the timely demarcation and delimitation of constituencies.

___________________________________

This is on rediff.com! Guess the budget for the above project!

Is GIS now an obsession on India? And are we trying to learn from projects done is US/UK/Canada?

Your comments?

Manoj

Indian GIS Market: On an Upswing

Indian GIS market will grow much faster than any other market in world! The die is cast!!

Indian GIS market is witnessing a major transformation**. Central Government (Federal Government) has spent several hundred crore Indian rupees (Several 100 million $s) under APRDP-R and National Land Records Modernization Programme (NLRMP) and planning to spend much more in future. Sample this - Rs 473 cores was allocation in NLRMP last year – that mean almost 100 million USD at the start of the projects!!!

“NLRMP has been approved by the Cabinet in its meeting held on 21.8.2008. The budget provision for the Scheme during the current year (2008-09) is Rs.473.00 crore. Accordingly, it is proposed to implement the NLRMP across the country and to make it fully operational over the next five to eight year period”

If we put together all the budgeted numbers that are planned for GIS related expenditure by Indian government, it will be a substantial percentage of the “total world GIS market size” estimated by Daratech report!! Actually, Daratech report of past years has given a complete slip to the Indian market (and none of the Indian companies figure in the list of Daratech)!!! All that should change for good now!!! And BTW, in addition to the government planning, some serious money in being spent in private sector as well!!!

Today’s TOI Business page has interesting news – “Finmin set to web-monitor infra projects – GIS Mapping will enable Officials Identify Causes of Delay, Deadline Miss”.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India-Business/Finmin-to-web-monitor-infra-projects/articleshow/4655913.cms . This GIS based process is $800K project. And you will hear many more in coming days.

For last few days, I started doing some research to re-assess and re-evaluate the Indian market. It will take me few more weeks to put together a market size evaluation and document the new dynamics in market (yes, its changing fast). Those of you who are interesting may send a request for the copy of report to me.

But there are several big question: Where is all the money going? Are these big budget projects getting successfully implemented? Are companies making money on these projects? Are Indian companies/government seeking out expertise from countries like Canada and USA to learn from the experience and mistakes committed by the countries who have invested heavily on GIS based systems?

Is Indian GIS market mature? More on this in future but I am keen to share an Incident that is almost 10 years old! There was a tender by Municipal Corporation of an IT savvy Indian state for a GIS project. Who’s who of Indian GIS industry participated in the pre-bid meeting. At least 30 executives of top companies converged in the city. Several thousand $ must have been spent by companies on preparation for the bid! Finally the project was awarded for USD200, yes there is no K in that – Rs 10,000 only!!! And all big companies lost out. Chairman of that company is a good friend and his logic was very interesting – he said my objective was to beat you(RMSI), Infotech & Rolta and I have done it!!! Cheers.

How different is situation now? Let’s discuss in coming days!!!

Manoj Misra

PS: ** I am fascinated by the word “Transformation”! My favorite questions, when I used to interview staff for technical positions used to be – what’s the difference between “Projection” and “Transformation”!!! The big question about Indian market is – is this “Projection” of market or true “Transformation”?

INDIAN ARMS BRIGHTEN UP MNC STORY !!!

Is Indian GIS story still on? I have no doubts!!! As always, I am extremely bullish about the future of GIS in India.. In the last 2 years, I have been fortunate to have interacted with some extremely talented GIS professionals and "GIS" entrepreneurs. Almost every one echoes my view!!!

Tope story in today's edition of Economic Times reads "Spreading CHEERS - INDIAN ARMS BRIGHTEN UP MNC STORY"

"INDIAN subsidiaries, relatively minor cogs in the wheels of large multinational companies till 2007, have emerged crucial profit generators, as earnings in developed western markets tumble amid the worst economic downturn in a generation. 

Barring a few exceptions, the locally-listed units of companies such as ABB, Glaxo, Siemens, Cummins, Oracle, Suzuki, Whirlpool, Nestle and Areva have increased their contribution to the global consolidated earnings as growth remains robust across various sectors of Indian industry.

 Significantly, this has happened despite a sharp depreciation of the rupee against major international currencies in the past one year, which tends to depress earnings in dollar terms as the dollar value of the subsidiary’s contribution is lower after currency conversion. Had this not happened, the contribution of these Indian units would have been much higher”

So how’s Indian arm of ESRI, Liaca, Intergraph, Autodesk, Bentley, Pitney Bowes etc doing in India? It’s anybody’s guess.

 

• What’s different between Indian an ROW (Rest of World)?
• What are the “facts” and “figures” behind this growth story?
• Where’s the money being spent? And who’s chasing this money?
• How’s technology driving the changes here in India?
• How’s the landscape of Indian GIS industry is changing? Believe you me – it’s changing at a very fast pace!!
• Has Navteq and TeleAtlas made any impact as yet Indian GIS market? How still CE (MapmyIndia) and Satnav bullish about pumping money into content development?

 

Stay tunes to hear from me… this time I will convert my “wish” into a “will” to write and I will!!!

 

Manoj Misra

So Long !!!

Dear Friends,

Its almost one year since I last wrote. A lot has happened in the last 11 months and I will be sharing some of the experiences (in the context of Indian GIS market) with you in next few blogs.

But first, reason for not writing for so long and the reason to come back to writing! I was busy, terribly busy. Few days back, I read the blong written by Amitabh Bachhan. I am amazed to see that he is writing almost every day. His blog has put me to shame - I am definitely not as busy as AB and hence the execuse that I am busy and hence no blogging is no good! If you are keen to read what AB writes, check out - www.blogs.bigadda.com/ab/ I am sure that some of you (especially Indian AB fans) will like his writings. I especially liked one of his post - http://blogs.bigadda.com/ab/2008/05/18/day-31/ The message there is:

“Man ka ho to acchha. Man ka na ho to zyada acchha !”
If things happen according to what you wish. It is good.
If things do not happen according to what you wish. Then it is even better.

A lot of things have not happened as per the wish in last several months. But I guess there must be a reason for the same. My deep apologies all those who sent me emails to write the blog but I did not respond. I hope that I will be able to make corrections and be able to share my througts with you.

I am happy about one thing that a lot of positive development has happened in last 11 months in the Indian GIS market. And a lot more is about to happen. Without doubt, we are going to witness a significant growth in the coming time.

I will be back with you, soon, with some thoughts,

Regards, Manoj

One more Google Map based Indian web-site? NO…

…we call it technology and innovation applied to purpose!

So finally we made www.idhoom.com live – yesterday night!! It is alpha launch and site is now open for public use, comments and feedback. In less than 24 hours we have seen visits from 32 different cities, across the globe!! This is s a great moral boosting point for all of us at AUGTICS.

I request you, especially the fellow GIS industry professionals (who read this blog regularly), to explore the mapping functions and drop a line in the suggestion box!

This site one of it’s kind in India and is intend to be single point source of information about all the residential societies (apartment complexes) – existing ones as well as new (upcoming) ones.

For the people who live in these societies, we have provided several cool features that will benefit the users. Key advantages:

1. Web presence & unique identity for your society
2. Secure intra-society communication platform
3. Tools to manage your society affairs
4. Mapping features to know your neighbourhood better

Those of you who are searching for the apartment complexes will find the “easy to use”, “google type” search functions handy.

We hope that this site will benefit millions of people. We have planned to bring in several more features for the next launch and hope that time we will have significant content and traffic on the site!

What’s the connection of IDHOOM.COM with real estate? It’s not a property listing site!!! But those who intend to live in a specific apartment complex can use IDHOOM to know details beyond the individual flat they may be interested in selling/renting. That’s all at this stage!!!

What’s our business model to monetize from this site? I will answer this in some future post. But wanted to let you know that this site is first in line of few more “different” ones that will be launching in future – all catering to existing, unmet needs!!

Stay tuned! And if you live in an apartment, get your society registered here to give in a unique presence over WWW and let your fellow residents explore the power of IDHOOM and get benefited!!

Manoj Misra

Is India a "test" market to train staff or a real GIS market?

So, finally after a long delay, AUGTICS will be launching the Alpha version of "community web-site" for "Society (Apartment/Group Housing) living" . I am very excited that AUGTICS team has created a product that is simple yet powerful. More on this on my next post - very soon!!

I was browsing GIS Development website and read the interview of Mohan Reddy, founder and CMD of Infotech Enterprises. Mohan has done a great job of starting Infotech and making Infotech as one of the top GIS companies in India (revenues in excess of USD 120 Million). So, it's always great to hear/read his view point. In the interview there is one specific Q&A on Indian geospatial market that I am reproducing below (I have highlighted the points that are interesting/relevant to this forum):
_______________

Q. What is the relevance of domestic geospatial market?
A. The domestic market should improve. Due to the lack of a strong domestic market, Indian companies face lot of challenges in the international space. The point is, where will we get the expertise to provide value addition to global customers? If you look at the private sector which started using IT many years ago, as a result of that, you have a strong IT base for the country providing services globally based on experience gained in the domestic market. Coming back to the GIS industry, Survey of India is the only acknowledged mapping agency. There is nothing like a geospatial industry in existence over here. The domestic industry has to take off and there is enormous advantage to derive from it. Because my trainee engineers cannot immediately work on projects overseas, we have to first act locally, with local supervision, which is a cost effective way to train people to provide value added services overseas later on.

--------------------------

One point comes out clearly. Companies like Infotech look at Indian market for picking up few new skills and train staff and then provide value added service to international clients. Clearly a good strategy!!!

However, there are few completely contrasting view "school of thoughts" are emerging in Indian market! In my past posts, I have referred about a start-up http://www.routeguru.com/

Couple of weeks back RouteGuru was launched for alpha testing. RouteGuru provides simple usable driving direction by using and referring to landmarks, liberally! Something that is very easy for common man to understand. I read review about RouteGuru somewhere and reviewer mentioned that RouteGuru will compete with with local paanwalas and rikshaw-drivers in providing driving directions. What interests me in Routeguru is the "GIS technology" that is applied and also dedication and determination of founder, Avinash Agrawal (an IIT Mumbai graduate, who has worked in the US, Middle East and India for several years and applying his knowledge and skills to serve the Indian market).

So one viewpoint of the Indian market is held by companies like Infotech and the other by new start-up companies like RouteGuru. One views comes from solid experience and proven business leader and other comes from the young entrepreneur, Avinash Agarwal, who has put in his life savings in a start-up venture looking at India as a big market!

I just wish that both contrasting views are strongly up-held in future as well. For that Infotech has to do well in future (more predictable) and "RouteGuru" has to become a viable business!

Manoj Misra

Who will launch navigable Indian street data first? We now know...

In my June 2 post, I asked the question - Who will launch navigable Indian street data first?

http://manojmisra.blogspot.com/2007/06/who-will-launch-navigable-indian-street.html

The answer is now known. It's Navteq!!
------

NAVTEQ First Global Digital Map Supplier to Release Map of India June 14, 2007
Company: NAVTEQIndustry: Wireless / NavigationLocation: Chicago, IL, United States of America

Chicago,IL -- NAVTEQ , a leading global provider of digital map data for vehicle navigation and location-based solutions, has announced its first availability of digital map coverage in India. The NAVTEQ(R) map of India covers a population of more than 53 million and includes over 64,000 kilometers of road for the cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore and the roads connecting these cities. The city centers of six major cities are covered at NAVTEQ's Detailed Coverage level, the highest and most complete database specification. The surrounding city areas include all navigable and named roads. All coverage areas include Points of Interest (POI) which can ease the use of navigation destination functionality or help users locate places and attractions of interest.

India is the world's second fastest growing economy as well as its second largest country in population. "Our customers have told us that focusing on the country's main economic centers enables them to optimize their business plans," stated George Filley, Vice President of Product Management, Americas and Asia Pacific, for NAVTEQ. "Additionally, industry experts anticipate huge growth potential in fleet and tracking solutions. Creating a north-south corridor with the connector roads further extends our customers' potential opportunities."

"We continue to align efforts in support of our customers as they expand their business models to reach further into Asia. And our global specification enables them to gain efficiencies in areas such as compilation which can improve their time to market which is so critical in an economy like this," added Rafay Khan, Vice President, of Business Development for Asia Pacific.

NAVTEQ has extensive coverage in Asia including, along with India, maps for the following countries and territories: Australia, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and through NAV2, NAVTEQ's joint venture in China, a map in China.

-------------

It needs to be, now, seen how Navteq capitalizes on this early mover advantage. And how much time TeleAtlas takes to come up with a competing product?

Whatever is the answer, this is a very positive development for Indian Geospatial and LBS market! Given the fact that there are several LBS companies springing up in India, let's hope we see some Indian nominations in the next NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge!!!

Manoj Misra

Who will launch navigable Indian street data first?

So finally good "street-mapping" data for India will be available, soon. And this will be one major step forward in the Indian GIS industry.

There are series of emails floating around about a new JV company in Pune. Without naming the company, there are several job postings that are put. Naukri.com list the following description:

"MNC with a leading global position in digital mapping and geospatial content products, launching a Joint Venture cooperation with an Indian GIS company. Key markets will include in-car navigation, portable and wireless navigation and location-based services in India and South Asia. The Indian operations will be part of a global organisation, covering six continents and activities in 64 countries and will be headquartered in Pune with regional centres throughout India."

From the positions that are there, you can easily make out that that the scale of operations will be massive!!!

Welcome TeleAtlas to India again! (My guess and do let me know if you get information otherwise). Two questions:

1. Why will TeleAtlas need to set-up India operations again (remember TA NOIDA operations was sold to Infotech) when they have good(?) Indian vendors?

2. Does TA JV partner has the management bandwidth to handle the scale?

Whatever is the answer( and definitely these are not the questions for public debate), one thing is for sure, Indian GIS companies will be loosing some staff to this JV operation. And managers will find one more reason for asking their management/board to increase the salaries of their staff to retain them!!! War for talent(?) is on and salaried staff never had it so good!!!

But with these rising salaries, will the Indian GIS companies be able to keep their cost low and remain competitive in the International market? Yes, if they are efficiently run and keep on increasing their top line year-on-year in excess of 30%. Keep a track of the growth!!!

Manoj Misra

Are we map-literate?

I am getting less and less time to write the blog. Hope that I am able to reverse this trend soon as we get into the next phase of AUGTICS life!! But, I do manage to keep a close track of the development within the Indian geospatial market.

I have been overjoyed looking at the recent developments in the Indian Geospatial industry. In sharp contract to the business model followed by the existing market leaders (Rolta, Infotech, RMSI), there are several companies that are springing up with a product based strategy. In the past I have mentioned about SatNav, RouteGru etc. Couple of days back I met with another company Geotrackers (http://www.geotrackers.com/) started by young IIM graduates, that plans to come up with LBS products and services. There is another company Bannari Infotech - Geo Edge that claims to be a pioneer in location based services in India (are they?)!. Company write up says – "we pride ourselves with having created many world-class pioneering products in the location services industry, often offering solutions not available elsewhere in India and at times even in Asia”.

Also, news of MapMyIndia raising capital from Kleiner Perkins & Sherpalo Ventures (undisclosed amount) escaped industry attention. The money will be used for creating highest quality GIS information. Source: http://www.contentsutra.com/categories/name/Venture%20Capital/

In previous post I mentioned that Navteq and Teleatlas are planning to be active in Indian market very soon. Keep your focus on Reliance (ADA), who may spring a surprise in near future by coming up with web-gis/LBS products. Have tasted great initial success with Zapak, if they do plan to launch an LBS product, you will see a lot of publicity.

Clearly, a new trend has set-in and we can expect to see action and war in LBS space in India in the very near future!

But one of the fundamental points that I keep on asking myself – Is Indian population, in general map-literate? Do we really like “reading maps”? Are we good at “reading maps”? Are we “taught map reading at high-school level”? Do we really depend on maps in our day to day lives? The answer, most likely, will be no! We don’t sell maps at petrol pump stations (like in US). We do not find a hood map of a city when we go to a place like (Ranikhet). And we do not see “city map board” in our cities. This fundamental issue may have an implication in adoption of LBS technology in the market. Those who are able to come up with smart non-map based applications, will take lead and those who relay largely on map display based applications, may not get the desired results.

Manoj Misra



PS: "Ranikhet" is a beautiful hill station in Uttarakhand. I spent first 17 years of my life at Ranikhet. You can get a great view snow-clad Himayala range there and Ranikhet gets snow every winter. Forget air-conditioner, you don't even need a fan in summers!!

M&A activities in Indian GIS industry

M&A activities in Indian GIS Industry seems to be on the rise..

1. A press release from Infotech, today, indicates that they have acquired majority stake in a Hyderabad based GIS start-up Geospace Integra. I had mentioned about Geospace Integra in one of my earlier post and was impressed to see the company growth since its inception about a year back. What's surprising is that the company put itself on the block within the first year of inception! What's even more surprising is that Infotech, one of the reasonably successful Indian GIS companies, in India felt the need to acquire another Indian company to grow it's India market !!! Read press release at..

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Infotech Enterprises makes strategic investment to address geospatial market opportunities in India and Middle East

Infotech Enterprises Ltd on May 15, 2007 has announced its strategic move to address Geospatial business opportunities in India and the Middle East by taking majority stake in Hyderabad-based Geospatial Integrated Solution Pvt Ltd (Geospace Integra).The geospatial market in India and Middle East is estimated at Rs 1000 crore and is expected to see a 12% growth rate over the next five years. The India government's Open Map Policy and Survey of India's large-scale mapping initiatives are unlocking geospatial opportunities in several areas. These include land records; urban planning; environment, forestry and natural resources; utility infrastructure planning and management; and defence. Similarly, the rapid pace of infrastructure development in the Middle East has led to a growing demand for geospatial services in that region.The Company is a world leader in geospatial services, particularly for the telecom, utilities and government markets in North America, Europe and Australia. It also enjoys a significant presence in the telecom and utility segments in India. By investing in Geospace Integra and leveraging the combined entity's strengths, the Company moves into an even stronger position to address the high-growth geospatial markets in India and the Middle East.Under the terms of the agreement, the Company and Geospace Integra will consolidate their geospatial business in India and Middle East into a single entity led by Chandrasekhar Nori. Chandrasekhar Nori has over 25 years of experience in Remote Sensing and mapping industry in India. He is credited with engineering and development of photowriting and imaging technology for Indian defence industry. The new entity will operate as a subsidiary of the Company.BVR Mohan Reddy, the Company's Chairman and Managing Director commented: "As we continue to reinforce our leadership position in the global geospatial markets, India and the Middle East become increasingly strategic to our growth objectives. By leveraging the knowledge and experience of Geospace Integra, supported by Chandrasekhar Nori's leadership, we have a compelling value proposition for customers in these markets. We expect to achieve Rs 100 Crore revenue in the next 3 years from our India and Middle East business."
Source: Equity Bulls
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2. November 2006, I met with one of the founders of Manchitra Service who mentioned to me that they are existing out of business and and company will have new owners. There was no formal news about this transaction but a visit at the Manchitra website will indicate some changes in the management team.

3. A leading global street mapping company has closed (or is very close to finalizing) the deal to acquire a Pune based GIS data company to further it's Indian street data plans (I hope that there is a formal company release soon)

Although the size of these deals is not known and is not likely to be too big, it's a good pointer to the fact that GIS industry in Investing - in India based GIS business! As I said earlier, a bright future ahead!!

Manoj Misra

Indian GIS Industry and University Collaboration

Last few weeks were extremely hectic (on AUGTICS front).Travelled to Mumbai (several times), Pune, Bhuvneswar, Puri and Konark and made new associates & friends with diverse backgrounds, in addition to exploring diversity of India. It was truly a very rich and rewarding experience on business and personal front. However, with all the activities, I could not keep pace with blogging. I hope I will be able to find more time in the coming days..

I mentioned in last post that I am very impressed with the quality of remote sensing research work that is bring carried out by IIT-R. Few months back, at at conference at Chennai, I got a preview of the exemplary work that is being carried out by Centre of Remote Sensing at Bharathidasan University, in the field of natural disaster mapping & mitigation (Seismicities, Landslides, Tsunamis, Flood etc). I also saw a discussion list on Yahoo Group (GIS India) where someone is collecting names of institutes offering GIS course and I noticed that the list contains names of over 60 institutes (on last count) and almost each of the top university in India now runs a GIS department. I do not know (comprehensively and fully) details of the research work that is being carried out in these labs, but one can safely assume that significant quality thinking is going on in the labs.

One reason for arriving at the assumption is the learning from interviewing the graduates from many of these universities - one point is loud & clear that the quality of education and research focus in the institutes is relatively good. Yet another point that stands out clearly is that when many of these students graduate and seek jobs in Indian GIS industry, they do not get the jobs that are challenging enough – or get into jobs where skills are underutilized.

So what are the reasons for this problem?

During my discussion with professors at some of these institutes & universities, one point came out very clearly - there is very less or minimal interaction between the Indian GIS industry & these institutes. Several great ideas evolves in these labs that can be monetized by the GIS industry, if there is appropriate collaboration. Also, there are several India specific GIS problems, faced by the the GIS industry, that can be tacked by these labs (due to availability of quality resources and R&D focus).

Adena Schutzberg posted a blog, last month, at allpointsblog - Consortium of Ohio Universities on Navigation and Timekeeping ( The Consortium of Ohio Universities on Navigation and Timekeeping, COUNT, includes experts from Miami, Ohio and Ohio State universities and the Air Force Institute of Technology, and will provide expertise to industry professionals and other scientists in those areas. According to Maimi of Ohio officials, COUNT has 40 faculty members, more than 100 students and more than $10 million in annual research funding).

I wish to see such an initiative between Indian GIS industry and the universities!!!

Based on the above points, I am sure that you will agree with me (fully in this case) that there is a need for increasing collaboration between Indian GIS industry and the educational institutes offering GIS courses and carrying out GIS research & development.

How do we increase industry-academia interaction? Give me your thoughts and suggestions and also stay tuned to hear my different view. This time definitely very soon!!

Manoj Misra

Navigation Systems and Driving Directions - do we need them in India?

In 2000, Satyam incubated a division/company that was know as Satyam Navigation. In the initial days focus (or at least that is what was known to me) of this group was to develop in-car navigation product. I was asked for my view the future of such a system in India and at that point of time I did not see much. My reasoning - instead of buying a car navigation system, I would roll down my car window and in highly populous and friendly India, I will find more than one willing person to help me in reaching my destination!! I had several personal experiences - if you ask for direction - people not just give direction but even offer to sit in car and lead you to the destination! Was I correct in my reasoning?

Krzysztof Kolodziej in his report "Location 2006 Conference – a Report from India" provides a great overview of Indian GPS and Telematics Market. Part of the report reads: "The Indian market is now at $22 million, but there is potential for growth to $448 million in the next three to four years. GPS companies (both local and international) are competing to grab a piece of this Indian market, especially in logistics for tracking cargo and trucks across the country. Prices for GPS devices in India range from $232 to over $2,325. Garmin will bring its 35 different models of GPS devices to India, ranging from $813 for a basic model to $2,325 for a high-end model (route planning with voice prompts). Local company SatNav launched SatGuide, a car navigation device, and is hoping to sell 3,000 units in the first year. This Pocket PC-based device (costing $883) has maps for 10 major Indian cities. Other companies like Sun Micro Systems (India) are building prototypes to provide location-based services for mobile roaming users. Wipro has developed GPS applications for clients such as those in fleet management, location-based services and automatic driver assistance." His report concludes with the statement - Watch out for the “Crouching Tiger” - it is set to pounce!

India VC Circle blog has a news that reads "Bennett, Coleman Acquires Stake In SatNav Technologies" So there is a future potential and there is action!

I like folks at SatNav. Not because two of the management team folk worked with me at RMSI Hyderabad office, but because these guys thought of a concept, ahead of it's time in India, have firmly kept their focus on the telematics market and are going great when the market seems to be poised for growth.

But has the situation really changed in India and can't we still roll down the windows and ask for direction? I can share one of my recent experience. Few days back, I received the following driving directions from one of my friends inviting us to birthday party of his son:
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From South Delhi/Dhaula Kuan/Central Delhi:
1. Come all the way to the Domestic Airport.
2. You will see the sign for Dwarka at the Airport roundabout.
3. Drive towards the sign- it is a straight road that will take you first under a bridge and then over a flyover. It is close to about 8 kms of stretch.
4. Once you get down of the flyover, keep towards the left. And at the first intersection (red light), take a left.
5. Once you take a left, you will see MTNL exchange on your right (other side of the road).
6. Now keep on the right and at the first red light, take a right.
7. Keep driving straight for maybe 1.2 kms, when you will hit a 4 way junction. It does not have a red-light but it is relatively busy. Cross it carefully!
8. Cross this and keep on driving straight. The road will curve slightly to right and then to left. This stretch maybe about 1.5 km or less- I have never measured it.
9. You will hit another 4-way junction- a again a busy junction and can't be missed. Take a left here and then drive straight.
10. After driving about .7 kms, you will hit a very busy cross-junction. This is Ashirwaad Chowk. On your left will be Pizza hut and Costa COffee. On left, across the road is Akash Institute. On your right will be grocery shops. On diagonally right, you will see Ayushman Hospital. You need to cross this junction. As soon as you cross it, the restaurant will be on your left hand side. There is a big board that says "SHUBHAM VALLEY RESTAURANT."
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We reached the venue, without the need to roll down window!!! If I did not had the directions, I would have surely required much more time and more petrol(gas) to reach the location!!!

The way directions were provided, by my friend, was really flawless. I felt that it will be difficult to model such directions in an application!! Answer came in my "Feedreader" box today -blog post (3/14) on the Live Maps/Virtual Earth blog - " Sending Directions the Web 2.0 Way" ! The post describes the feature of Live Map, that allows you to add your own personal driving direction notes on top of the standard driving directions!!!

So what should I conclude on future of in-car navigation/personal navigation/web-direction system for India?

Manoj Misra

PS: Action is picking up on the AUGTICS front and hence a bigger gap in posting the blog!!

Will the younger generation bring in a revolution in Indian GIS industry?

The best part of being an entrepreneur is that you explore and experience new horizons on a continuous basis and learn new things regularly! With clearer business plan, core team in place, first few clients in sight and groundbreaking portal getting ready for testing and launch, we have started preparing AUGTICS for seed funding. My search for potential investors took me to a news item titles “GVFL to fund RapidRadio's RFID Technology”. Apart from the decent funding and the funding company, what attracted me towards RapidRadio are the technology (RFID) and the 20 something founders of the company. And it motivated me enough to write this post!

RFID technology holds immense potential and has been talked in US and other countries for last several years. The good part is that RFID Technology has now overcome the technology hype and is now on the slope of enlightenment.

RFID technology, combined with GPS and GIS technology holds lot of promises and we will see a several applications bringing in changes to the way we do things today. It will definitely help companies in better inventory management and better logistics but a lot more will be possible! Imagine picking up all your groceries from store and bill getting generated automatically as you walk past the payment counter (well the RFID tags on your groceries will be read and a bill generated automatically – no need for long wait in the long ques)!!

Few days back, a 20 something person contacted me after reading this blog and wanted me to see his creation a “map editor” and a “map viewer”. The person is not from GIS industry, has not met anyone from the GIS industry so far and I was the first privileged person from the GIS industry to view is creation! He has been working on the SW creation for last several years, as his passion is to create tools for visualization! I must tell you that the work he has done is really excellent and if it’s productized, can easily create some unease for the existing order!

My recent discovery of routeguru that is started by 20 something folks (read my Feb 6, opening post Start of a Different View - Indian GIS Industry), 20 something Indian GIS professional outnumbering professionals of all age and of same age from rest of the world to participate in GIS communities on ORKUT (read my Feb 15 post Indian GIS data - bright future ahead !), my meeting with 20 something person who has developed a fantastic GIS data editor and viewer, & RapidRadio, set-up by 20 something, prompted me to ask this question: “Will the younger generation bring in a revolution in Indian GIS industry?”

The question is open to everyone to interpret & respond, but I must confess that looking at this trend, I do feel a lot more aged at 36! Happy Holi and go out and get a DIFFERENT COLORFUL VIEW!!

Manoj Misra

Is Indian GIS industry only a low end data conversion industry?

The main objective of my writing this BLOG was to remain connected, occasionally, with geo-spatial industry while I am working on establishing AUGTICS. The response to this BLOG is amazing with several hundred people from exactly 100 different geographic locations have, so far, read this India specific BLOG!! I have taken the adjacent snapshot from GOOGLE ANALYTICS that allows me to see from where the traffic is reaching the BLOG!

How is this possible? Simple – the IP address from where the BLOG is assessed is geo-coded and then displayed on the map above! Cool. Today this geo-coding is done at a city level. Tomorrow as the technology progresses furtherer, the resolution will get better and better (your IP will be tagged to your precise location of surfing). Imagine the implication - exact location of IP being mapped, then analyzing your “surfing pattern”, “google adds” will not just be based on the text you are reading but also based on your individual behavior (surfing pattern), increasing the probability of your buy on clicking the advertisement multi-fold! This will be GIS and analytics at its best! Clearly this will be feasible in near future and clearly GIS is going to become pervasive in everyday life!!

My BLOG generated a very interesting discussion on the Yahoo Group - GIS India. I have picked the following text from the emails by Carl, Abhijeet, and Maneesh.

• “Most of the so called GIS work has been either Digitization [30%] / writing codes for customizing ESRI/MapInfo products[30%], which I really don’t feel as GIS. and most of which are for the US of A and has no relevance for our country.”
• I know that starting at the digitizing level is a good start for an entry in GIS, but the pay is very appalling according to what IT pays for a person at the same level and the GIS person is gonna be 3 years behind at any level, compared to a normal standard
• GIS in India is just CAD and only CAD. do it in micro-station or any other sophisticated version, western countries are utilizing cheap production rate in India
• As far my concerns about India, There are whole lots of things happening around the world. It seems to me that we as implementers are lagging too behind. Ironically, the Gap between innovation (Or perhaps the adoption of innovations) and implementation is growing larger day and night. When-ever, we get to share the similar platform along with the rest of the world, in-spite of the fact that We are being capable, we do appear to be out of the place (For instance-We still talk about converting our legacy maps in to
  digital format."its just -tip of an ice berg- lot can be mentioned).

There were few other emails supporting or opposing the above issues. On this post, at a starting point, I would like to provide my “different view”!

So is Indian GIS industry all about low end GIS data conversion?

There is absolutely no doubt that thousands of people are employed by GIS companies to work on data conversion tasks. Key reasons for data conversion forming bulk of the Indian GIS industry are:

- India cost advantage vis-à-vis developed countries (same logic on which the entire Indian software industry was set and is doing well)

- Several large conversion houses in the US (AGRA BAYMONT, ASI, etc) and other counties have closed down conversion shops in local countries, simply because Indian and other low cost countries were able to carry out the quality data creation task at much lower cost.

In general “data” forms a bulk part of any GIS system (~60%) and coupled with the natural flow of conversion work to India, Indian companies, put together, will be doing excess of ~60% work as conversion job!!! Is this trend going to reverse? Not in the near future. On the contrary on account of boom in the utility companies across the globe, increase in demand of high resolution (and 3D) data and India data development initiatives, I expect that the there will be significant increase in conversion work in next few years!!!! Is this bad development for the Indian GIS industry? Not at all - it makes a great economic sense for the end clients, great business for the Indian companies and employment for several people. So, isn’t’ Indian GIS industry all about low end GIS conversion! Yes, if you look at this visible bulk of work that is happening and ignore the rest of the development around!

So what are the projects/activities other then data conversion? Few pointers:

- Intergraph, Bentley & AutoCAD, all have a product development center in India. It’s a matter of time before likes of MapInfo and ESRI follows the suit and takes advantage of quality talent and lower cost of development in India

- SAC, NRSA and several other government organizations are working on several groundbreaking projects.

- The quality of research works premium educations institutions like IITs, NITs, Anna University, BIT/BITS etc and number of students taking interests in geo-spatial technology has improved and increased multi-fold over the last several years

- Private education institutions like Symbiosis have started producing quality GIS professionals

- Most of the established GIS companies have a sound software development group and several of then are setting up consulting divisions that offers solutions to clients based on geospatial technology

- Almost all IT majors Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Satyam etc have a GIS division/group focusing on GIS application

- And there are companies like SatNav and CE focused on developing India specific products

The eco-system for rapid expansion of GIS application projects within India is just about getting right. With government policy aiding the industry, increased visibility of the technology (thanks to Google Earth/Maps and MS Virtual Earth!), likely availability of Indian data in near future, GIS industry in India is about to experience a revolution! And the constraints that are here, in India, will give rise to new innovations and new types of applications and products that could be further implemented in other developing countries!

Is Indian GIS Industry poor paymaster?

Salaries or (let me reword is at “price” of a professional) is largely driven by economic reason of demand and supply and the self-life of the skill. Yes there are several companies that pay a very small amount to digitizing operators largely because the skill set required to do the task is available in India in abundance. But the price (salary) commanded by skilled GIS professional at times is higher than the normal IT price! Currently there is a sort of “war for talent” going on for the skilled GIS professionals in industry and only weapon used in this is money!

What does this mean to individual professionals?

But while industry will evolve based on the market forces, government policies and industry dynamics, industry will always have mix of job (low end – high end, low paying – high paying) without exception! Within that framework, there is enough room for individual professionals to shape their careers – if you have been working on GIS data conversion for years, go ahead and enhance your skill set’s (and thus your self-life and self-value!!) matching with the dream job you want to perform – and surely you will get your dream job!! It’s the prerogative of individual professional to shape his/her career and destiny. Industry will, most likely, value you not more than the value you put to yourself!

Remain tuned with this BLOG to hear on Indian GIS industry from me and keep writing your comments on the BLOG! And BTW, now you can reach this BLOG by simply typing www.manojmisra.com – easy to remember, if you spell my name correctly!

Manoj Misra

PS: On AUGTICS front, things have started rolling (but not as fast as we really wish)!! We are making new contacts and friends on every day basis. Portal development is progressing fast and is on track. We have zeroed in on the name for portal (and have it registered) and future Chief Research Officer for AUGTICS identified and informal offer made and! Market for the work that we are doing look promising and exciting based on research and meetings with potential customers and competition!