Rohan Verma, MapMyIndia: "We've seen 600% growth in the last three years."

We at YourStory caught up recently with entrepreneur Rohan Verma, the Director at MapMyIndia. Rohan, a Stanford University alum, conceptualized and created MapMyIndia.com, the web piece of their business. MapMyIndia.com recently announced the addition of house numbers to its maps for about 18 cities, for free public use. Given below are the excerpts from the free-wheeling chat with Rohan, where we talk about the business idea behind MapMyIndia, the LBS space in India and how their investors have helped them scale their business.

MapMyIndia was started way back in 1992, well before the IT revolution took off in India. Can you take us through how it all started and how you got involved?

Well, we had been living in the US for about 12 years. Dad and mom (Rakesh and Rashmi) used to work with General Motors and IBM. They wanted to raise us kids in India and so, we shifted here in the 90s. The US had a fairly evolved maps market even then. Based on that, they believed that maps could benefit India and started MapMyIndia. And it’s taken a while to do that. After all, mapping a country like India is anything but easy.

I went to college in the US in 2003. In 2004, I didn’t do an internship there and based on my dad’s idea of taking map access to the common man in our country and beyond the 500 – 600 companies that had bought access, we started working on the web portal, MapMyIndia.com

What were the reference points for MapMyIndia.com?

At that point, Yahoo! Maps and MapQuest were the popular reference points. As freshmen in college, we travelled using their directions. We wanted to take that to the people because maps let people travel safely, confidently and easily. Initially, I wasn’t very interested in the project. But once I started working on it, I got completely immersed and we launched MapMyIndia.com in the same year (2004). The expat community, in particular, was very excited. Finally, they could see their native place on the map. The sight of familiar lakes, temples, roads, etc. made it very attractive for them.

But India doesn’t have a map-reading culture, does it?

Yes, we did face a lot of cynicism over that point initially. But we looked it as a problem of access. Information asymmetry was definitely there. Infrastructure was an issue. There were no travel tools and we realised that it boiled down to simple things like no weekend getaways. But MapMyIndia.com started changing all that.

We focussed on accuracy and the quality of map data because even business decisions were being made based on our maps.

You have quite a few offerings now.

The consumer play started in 2004. We have been diversifying and extending the range since then. We launched our mobile apps in 2007. We powered the GPS for Blackberry with Airtel. We got into turn-by-turn navigation with voice instructions for cars in 2007. That was very well-received. General Motors wanted to sell it an option on their cars. Ford wanted to build it into their cars. Since then, Hyundai, Mitsubishi, BMW, etc. have also gotten on-board. We’ve sold over 100,000 navigation devices since 2007. Even Aircel’s 3G PocketFinder is run by MapMyIndia.

How have things changed for MapMyIndia.com since the launch of Google Maps?

Are you looking at monetizing your internet service? What are the price points of your other offerings and the number of paying customers?

For consumers, the web interface will always remain free. We might look at monetizing from businesses. For instance, we already do stuff like ICICI Bank branch locators or Honda dealership locators. Our mobile apps cost about Rs.2000. Our GPS navigation devices fall in the range of Rs.8000 – Rs.20,000. We also do physical map books, which are priced in the range of Rs.300 – Rs.400. Apart from that, we also do tracking systems, fleet management, in-car navigation systems, etc. In total, we’ve got about half a million paid customers.

Take us through the challenges in the MapMyIndia journey.

India’s a very difficult country to map. There is no standard adjustment system. The northern part of the country has ‘sectors’. The southern part has ‘old’ numbers and ‘new’ numbers. Then, there are the building names and countless roads which, well, don’t have any names. It’s terribly complex. In the US, it’s simple. You’ve got street names, street numbers and the zip code. So, we’ve had to resort to landmark-based directions and that works very well here.

Also, getting people to realise that they need such a service is a huge challenge. But yes, consumer acceptance is rising. We’ve got 80% market share in our automotive and telecom play. We strongly believe that the more information there is, the more consumers will be encouraged to find uses for that information.

Take our mobile app, for instance. It costs about $50. That’s not cheap, by any standards. But it has consistently been ranked very highly on the ‘Top 25 Grossing Apps’ list of iTunes India. It offers full turn-by-turn navigation on the device, without needing the internet. So, there is a latent need.

If you look at competition, apart from Google Maps, Nokia made a great deal of noise around navigation. These guys have invested in the map market and we’re happy that they have. But ultimately, this isn’t their core business. So, we’re keeping ourselves busy by enhancing our core and adding many more layers of information.

What are your thoughts about the location-based services (LBS) space in India?

LBS, as a space, is definitely looking very interesting. It’s an area that people have innovated around and they continue to do so. It’s also social in nature and that expands the scope in so many ways. There’s the enterprise angle as well. But the value proposition needs to be clear. Using a data source that’s inaccurate will slow things down. I mean, just look at Facebook Places. In the US, I believe that it’s doing decently well. But here, they don’t have a very good location directory. And really, it’s no fund ‘checking in’ to some place one kilometre away.

We find traffic apps very interesting. We are looking at integration with Zomato and we’re betting big on ‘gastro search’.

The LBS market is at a nascent stage. But it’s growing rapidly, doubling in size year-on-year. Currently, we’d say that it’s about 100 crores. It should be a Rs.1000 crore market in the next 3 – 4 years.

You’ve been funded twice and you have investors like Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Sherpalo Ventures, Nexus India Capital and Qualcomm Ventures backing you. How have they added value? Also, are you planning to raise another round of capital?

Qualcomm Ventures helped us accelerate the telecom piece of our business. They’ve been driving data-rich services and they’re really helped us out with our go-to-market. We’ve become a Tier 1 supplier to telecom companies. They’ve also helped out on device hardware front.

The teams from KPCB, Sherpalo and Nexus are very, very good. Some of them have been entrepreneurs themselves. And thanks to their sharp minds, we’re able to see where we are heading 3 -5 years down the line and also, how different companies/markets are behaving/likely to behave.

And no, there are no immediate plans to raise capital. We’ve been profitable and we’ve seen 600% growth in the last three years.

So, how big is the MapMyIndia team? And are you looking at overseas expansion?

We’ve got more than 700 people at MapMyIndia, currently. About 400 are professional surveyors, 150 are engineers and another 150 are sales guys spread across 50 locations in the country. That’s the rough breakup. We’re looking to expand our sales presence and be in 150 cities by the next year. We’ve been having a 15% - 20% increase in headcount, year on year.

We already have maps for SriLanka and Nepal out for some of our automotive clients. We’re looking at some international markets. But India will continue to be our biggest bet.

We at YourStory wish Rohan and the entire team at MapMyIndia all the very best. Do let us know what you think of this story by writing to us at [email protected].

Sriram Mohan | YourStory | 5^th July 2011 | Bangalore