With the growing push around Zoho’s suite of products, including Arattai, often hailed as India’s answer to WhatsApp, Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu’s praise of MapMyIndia’s Mappls app carried more weight than a simple compliment.
By calling it the result of “decades of R&D, much longer than Google Maps”, he wasn’t merely admiring a product; he was acknowledging survival, resilience and a vital contribution to India’s sovereign technology ecosystem.
It was a testament to a company that refused to die in a market dominated by a foreign monopoly and built against the odds.
This recognition arrived at a crucial moment. Just days earlier, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had publicly demonstrated Mappls live in his car, showcasing its 3D navigation, junction views and shop-level mapping. Moreover, when he called it ‘Swadeshi Mappls’, he signalled something unmistakable: India intends to reclaim ownership of its mapping infrastructure.
This marked the culmination of something MapMyIndia had been awaiting since 2004—validation. The government has since announced plans to sign an MoU with MapMyIndia to integrate the Mappls GIS platform into the railway network.
That single gesture sparked a surge in downloads. “We saw two lakh downloads in a single day. We’ve crossed 35 million now. In the last few days alone, we added another three lakh,” Rakesh Verma, the company’s founder and managing director, told AIM.
MapMyIndia’s turnaround is more than a business story. It is the tale of a company that was nearly buried under the weight of Google’s dominance and, yet, kept building.
Long Before Google
MapMyIndia prioritises building a sovereign tech layer that isn’t dependent on Silicon Valley’s control of infrastructure. “We have nothing against foreign companies. But the playing field was never level. For 10 years, we were hidden from users. Handset makers were arm-twisted to preload only Google Maps,” Verma said.
“Google Maps has conquered India the way the East India Company [once] did,” he revealed. “If they had done it through better products and fair competition, [it would’ve been] fine. But they hid us for 10 years.”
He recalled how handset manufacturers were pressured to preload only Google Maps. “It’s like being told by a foreign power what we can use in our own country,” he said.
The company’s fight for survival started long before Google Maps even entered India. In 2004, MapMyIndia launched the country’s first online map portal and a portable GPS device.
For a while, it was everywhere—until Google arrived.
“When Google came, we were kicked out of the handset space,” Verma said. “But we turned around. We built technology for automotives and then for high-definition autonomous maps. We’ve been innovating ever since.”
In 2021, the government’s deregulation of mapmaking finally gave Indian companies like MapMyIndia a fair shot. “That was the first momentum. It put us on a level field. This is the second,” he added.
That second momentum—government endorsement—has triggered an internal sprint. “We’ve formed a 30-member team just to monitor search and service stability. The surge is massive. And this time, we are ready.”
Notably, Apple Maps also uses MapMyIndia for several India-specific data and locations.
The Sovereign Tech Playbook
Mappls today supports voice commands, 3D junction views, live traffic, toll estimates, speed alerts and door-level navigation. It remains the only Indian mapping app that can be integrated directly into vehicle systems, and is already embedded in several automakers’ platforms, including Maruti Suzuki.
Verma has formally asked the government to require Mappls to be pre-installed on smartphones manufactured under the PLI scheme. “When someone buys a phone, they should see both Google Maps and Mappls. Let users choose. Today, most Indians don’t even know there’s an alternative,” he pointed out.
It’s not protectionism; it’s access. He compared it to Swiggy and Zomato: “Sometimes you order from one, sometimes the other. But at least you have a choice.”
This vision of “sovereign tech” is quietly being stitched together across Indian software. Vaishnaw, as well as home minister Amit Shah, recently switched to Zoho’s suite of tools. MapMyIndia’s partnership with India Post on the DIGIPIN system—which allows users to generate precise machine-readable addresses—is another piece of that puzzle.
“It’s a hybrid of physical and digital. No one else has that,” Verma stressed.
India’s Maps, Indian Languages, India’s AI
Behind the app’s interface lies an AI system that has been at work for years. “We’ve been using AI for five years, much before it became a buzzword,” Verma said.
For MapMyIndia, AI operates on two layers. The first is in building the maps themselves—recognising road patterns, updating changes and cleaning user data. The second is in refining the user experience. “If you say, ‘I’m hungry’, the app should understand what that means in your context—[whether you want] restaurant, dhaba or something else.”
Everything, Verma insists, is done in-house. “We’re not outsourcing any of this. It’s our data, our algorithms, our infrastructure.”
MapMyIndia has added support for nine Indian languages, including Kannada and Bengali, with the highest usage outside the metros coming from Bihar. Users, he noted, often prefer Hindi or their regional languages.
Building such localisation is expensive, but MapMyIndia has chosen to self-fund it. “We take a portion of our profits and plough it back,” Verma said. “Tomorrow, if advertisers come, [it’s] great. But we’ve always believed in customer-funded growth.”
This is not an exaggeration. Verma still swears by the Harvard Business Review’s write-up about MapMyIndia’s “customer-funded model”. “Being listed now gives us the option to raise money if needed, but we’d rather grow from within.”
When Investors Said No
Not everything has gone smoothly. Earlier this year, MapMyIndia tried to spin off its consumer business, Mappls, into a separate entity. Investors vehemently pushed back. “Learning for me was simple. It’s not our private property. Forty-eight per cent of the company belongs to public investors. We accepted our mistake. Listening to the market is not a weakness,” Verma explained.
That transparency, rare in Indian corporate circles, might explain why MapMyIndia is still trusted by the Street.
If Google’s strength lies in data, MapMyIndia’s moat is its process. “Our biggest IP isn’t just data. It’s how we build maps,” Verma said.
Their maps are updated using both professional survey data and crowdsourced inputs. But unlike Google, every change undergoes human verification. The company is now moving into live city data. Bengaluru recently became the first city where Mappls displayed live traffic signal countdowns.
“We got calls from Pune, Jaipur and others asking for it. We can replicate this model in any city, as long as local authorities cooperate,” he said. Even EV chargers, metro lines and smart grids notifications are in the pipeline.
Beyond India
MapMyIndia isn’t stopping at India’s borders. The company has already entered Southeast Asia through a joint venture with Hyundai AutoEver, based in South Korea. It now has its sights set on the Middle East and Africa. “Our platform is country-agnostic,” Verma said. “Plug in local maps, and everything works. India is our testbed, but the same system can scale globally.”
Verma co-founded the company with his wife, Rashmi, and their son Rohan, a Stanford graduate who now oversees operations. Together, they’ve built a team of over 1,400.
“The DNA is innovation,” he said. “And now, with professionals handling execution, we can think long-term.” For Verman, sustaining a product matters more than simply launching one. “Too many Indian platforms came and vanished. Building something just for the heck of it isn’t enough. You need to make it last.”
His final message is simple: “Try it. Use Mappls. You’ll like it,” he said. “If something doesn’t work, tell us. We’ll fix it. The more you use it, the better it gets.”
MapMyIndia has spent two decades fighting an invisible war—building what it was never allowed to build, surviving where others folded. Now, with the government, industry and users rallying around, it’s finally being seen for what it truly is: not an alternative, but a foundation.
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