Ola Electric unveils in-house navigation system

Ola Electric has launched its own in-house navigation system, Ola Maps.

Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-founder and Group CEO, Ola took to social media to make this announcement. "We’ve made our in-house maps live on the Ola Electric website. Soon all Ola properties will run only Ola Maps. Absolutely excited about the potential to build the future of maps for India in India."

Last year, in October, Ola has acquired Pune-based geospatial services startup Geospoc. Post acquisition, the team announced that it would be building new geo-location technologies.

"New mobility will see profound changes in the way people move. New vehicle form factors and modes of transport will transform our day-to-day lives. These fundamental changes will require investments in next-gen technologies, including location and geospatial technologies, and advancements in satellite imagery conversion into real-time maps as well as 3D, HD, and vector maps," Bhavish had said during the acquisition.

Currently, Ola offers navigation based on MapMyIndia.

Meanwhile, according to reports, the Indian government has been pushing for the adoption of homegrown navigation system, NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation).

NavIC was developed by ISRO and has been operational since 2018. Currently, it is being used for public vehicle tracking in India, for providing emergency warning alerts to fishermen, and for tracking and providing information related to natural disasters.

The government has asked smartphone makers to sell new devices that would use NavIC from next year but players have requested time till 2025.

Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has mandated fitting NavIC-based AIS-140 compliant vehicle trackers in all public and commercial vehicles.