• Young Turks

Imagine a device that sits in your vehicle and helps you find your way effortlessly—that’s exactly what Rohan Verma and his company MapmyIndia thought of. And that’s the reason we featured him on Young Turks in 2008. Verma continues to be the key navigator of MapmyIndia and the company has gone from being just a free mapping portal to now even putting out a 3.5 inch hand-held GPS navigation device. Using state-of-the-art technology, the MapmyIndia navigator can today map 6 lakh villages and towns and gives us information about streets, localities, landmarks and even house numbers. With preloaded 3D content on its maps Verma claims that MapmyIndia’s innovation gives consumers real time navigation experience with 95 percent accuracy.

“Since the last time we met on CNBC Young Turks, MapmyIndia has grown a lot. In terms of size of business, we have grown over 600 percent. In terms of where we wanted to reach, in the automotive sector we have become a trusted business partner to car companies and even for telecom operators and handset manufacturers, we are the partner of choice. In fact, today we come preloaded in cars like Hyundai and BMW, in phones like the Samsung Galaxy Tab and even part of applications such as the Aircel pocket finder. In terms of maps, we may have released maps for 18 cities at the street level in 2008; now we have released maps for over 1,000 cities at street level,” says Verma.

In the last three years, MapmyIndia has managed to bag over 500 corporate clients across 60 cities. Adding 10,000 customers a month on mobile, Rohan aims to reach out to over 50 million mobile subscribers by 2016.

“For telecom operators and handset manufacturers, our focus has been to come out with more applications which are interesting. We want to add value to the core hardware product that these companies sell or the basic connectivity service that the telecom operators sell by offering more and more navigation applications, even social networking application with location integrated or other kinds of location-based offers and advertising options. Our focus has been to provide more solutions which they can use to enhance their decision-making, be it for retail side selection or sales marketing distribution,” explains Verma.

Undeterred by competition, Verma is looking at expanding to tier II and tier III cities and will invest Rs.9 crore over the next three years.

“I have friends [who I studied with in Stanford in the U.S.] who have randomly called to compliment me on my business. They have also seen my interview on CNBC Young Turks. It was a big achievement for me to be featured on CNBC. I think that CNBC played an important role in our growth over the last three years and for that I must thank CNBC Young Turks. And wish them all the very best for not just the past 10 years but for the coming 10 years as well,” adds Verma.

©Entrepreneur May 2011

Tags:
BMW, GPS, Hyundai, MapmyIndia, navigator, Rohan verma, solution, stanford, Young Turks