MapmyIndia revamps its main app along with a slew of updates

Boosting 'Make in India' initiative, location and navigation service provider, MapmyIndia has announced revamping of its main app, now known simply as Map along with a slew of new updates and partnerships.

The Map app is available on Apple’s App Store as well as Google Play store. According to the company, what makes the Map app different from any other mapping services already available to us, is not just the accuracy of its navigation, but the integration of features like real-time tracking, analytics, and reporting. The reporting feature is served by the Civic Sensors in the app, which allows a user to report either an emergency or being able to report any kind of environmental or civic complaints of areas they travel to or from.

The company has also introduced Hey Map, an AI-based digital navigation assistant that will be integrated with the keypads of your smartphone so that users can just touch on the Hey Map icon on the keypad, and ask for the details of their location.

Though at present Hey Map supports Hindi and English, however, the company has partnered with Reverie Language Technologies, which is helping them in localising the service, and soon they will be rolling out support for 10 more Indian languages to the app.

"Our new Hey Map keyboard assistant, and new flagship Map app, will allow all billion Indians to benefit from our map of the future by allowing powerful map, navigation, tracking, and analytics features to be accessed across all interfaces, such as mobile, keyboard, voice, VR, across all apps, websites, phones, and IoT platforms and the data and APIs that underlie our map will be power a whole host of consumer, automotive, business and government solutions," said Rohan Verma, Chief Technology Officer, MapmyIndia.

With the new app, users can also create and search for MapmyIndia's eLocs - shortcodes for physical addresses. It has other features such as real-time location sharing, tracking journey, and providing traffic information as well.

The company has also partnered with Aatapaha Smart Lightings to create a service where the lights on roads and highways light up only when cars are running on them. In the absence of a running traffic, the smart lights on these roads would dim to 20 percent.

Additionally, MapmyIndia has partnered with ISRO's satellite mapping portal Bhuvan, along with integration with the soon-to-launch Navic, India's indigenous satellite navigation system. This enables tracking and geofencing features in the new Map app, apart from features such as searching for brands, reporting issues for other users to see, and information and reviews on locations in the maps.

The company is also joining hands with Udacity, self-learning education platform, to strengthen the self-driving ecosystem in India.

Udacity provides a platform for a nine months online programme in self-driving, where students will work on interactive projects in computer vision and robotic controls, as well as other software development skills that are required to build and develop the self-driving car technology. MapmyIndia has been investing in developing cutting edge technology to fuel maps which can power self-driving cars, of smart cities and states and smart businesses.

The partnership will provide extensive career opportunities for students who take up this course and will help them solve real-life job challenges.