In another step towards making India ‘Atmanirbhar’ the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and digital mapping and location-based deep-tech company MapmyIndia Friday announced that they have collaborated 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. The services will be connecting the power of MapmyIndia's digital maps and technologies with ISRO's catalogue of satellite imagery and earth observation data.
Mr Verma said that this initiative will expand Aatmanirbhar Bharat campaign, Indians in future will not have to depend on services designed outside the country. "You don't need Goo*le Maps/Earth any longer", Verma in a LinkedIn post said.
The Department of Space (DoS), under which ISRO comes on Friday has signed an MoU with geospatial technology company CE Info Systems Pvt Ltd, which MapmyIndia owns. As a part of the agreement, both companies would produce solutions by leveraging their geoportals and work on enhancing geospatial expertise.
The company stated that with this partnership end-user maps, apps, and services will become much better and users in Indian will get more detailed, and comprehensive, as well as privacy-centric, hyper-local, and indigenous mapping solutions, compared to foreign map apps and solutions.
"This partnership with ISRO heralds a new dawn of Aatmanirbhar Bharat in the strategic area of maps and geospatial technologies," Rohan Verma, CEO & Executive Director, MapmyIndia, said in a statement.
Users will get several map-based analytics and insights about the weather, pollution, agricultural output, land-use changes, flood and landslide disasters, among others, the company said.
Speaking on 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."
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Mr Verma further added that MapmyIndia's maps and APIs will enhance ISRO's geoportals.
“It will empower 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 in a fully indigenous Aatmanirbhar ISRO-MapmyIndia platform," he added.