GPS nav top enterprise technology

BANGALORE, INDIA: GPS navigation is a totally new concept in India. We take pride in the fact that we introduced the topic to the public in 2002. Our efforts, till the beginning of 2007 were predominantly to collect the data and update our database.

It was a challenging task as India was a country with no clear maps and many unnamed roads and no clear cut defined boundary data available anywhere. The house numbers and street names are not numbered and named logically in India, and sometimes, there are lots of different names to the same road.

SatNav Technologies is the pioneer of GPS satellite navigation in India with an extensive map of India that covers 200+ cities with 15 lakh points of interests (POIs). SatNav has been building maps since 1999. Today, SatNav has the widest range of navigation products in India sold under the brand name SatGuide. SatGuide and the GPS domain are definitely poised to be among the top technologies for 2009.

We invested about 1,000 surveyors manyears and several crores crores to collect data and built our database to 15 lakh destinations to reach all across the country. Then, we faced a new challenge, marketing our product.

Convincing people in India that they need a navigation device to help them get around was very hard, people laughed at the idea and said, I can pick up anybody on the road and he will come with me and take me where I want to go.

However, as they saw our demos and realized that it can be used as a tool to plan their trip, optimize on petrol, optimize on time, mark favorites, find the nearest ATM of the bank of their choice, along the route they are driving, and NEVER GET LOST, that people started to sit up and take notice of SatGuide.

Today, we are proud to have 55,000+ users across India and a community of 18,000+ of registered users who are GPS enthusiasts who may not necessarily be our customers, but who like to follow the progress in India. We also have partnered with many retail chains who are selling our product.

We have also partnered with phone manufacturers who have bundled SatGuide with their product like ASUS and i-Mate on their leading models. We are a company with a core team of eight people and 133 associates today. All these make SatGuide eligible to be in the top 10 list of Enterprise technologies for 2009 on the strength of the potential that GPS has to offer.

The author is CEO and Founder MD of SatNav Technologies.