The Homogeneous Ground - Flexibility, Agility & Disruption

Hyperlocal in its traditional sense refers to the nature of demand and supply markets where both the participants are in the same locality. Imagine a radius of 3kms that may include restaurants, grocery stores, pharmacies, handymen, cabs, etc.

With changing times and the world economy starting at the wake of COVID-19, customer demands are continually increasing as they become sensitive to touch-points, wait time, walk time and so on. Not only for the hypothetical 3kms radius but also deliveries incoming from 500kms or more.

The current infrastructure of mapping solutions is a standard format based on the assumption that most vehicles are four-wheelers or cars. Routes are calculated and estimated as per this, however, we have seen a food-delivery done using two-wheelers and heavier trucks are used for larger freights.

One standard mapping solution doesn’t suit all business because a two-wheeler can pass through smaller lanes while heavy vehicles need to follow wider roads along with RTO regulations on timings. The maps used today do not accommodate these aspects, resulting in loss of time, fuel, overall CAPEX and efficiencies. It is proven that deeper the automation, more efficient the result is. It no longer deems fit to use one size fits all solutions when there is an immense potential to have bespoke solutions for all your pain-points.

What If Maps Could Listen?

As companies go global, they’re also turning hyperlocal. In today’s age of instant gratification – where customers want goods and services delivered in quick-time – hyperlocal is the way to go. Be it Amazon or Walmart, global players are embracing bespoke, hyperlocal ecosystems to win the delivery race in emerging economies.

However, there is a major challenge when it comes to emerging economies – the lack a customized mapping solution that will find a delivery or drop location in that small alley of a crowded residential locality, in the fastest time, without the delivery executive losing his way.

The requirement is for maps to be constantly updated in the near real-time to accurately represent the underlying ground reality as experienced by your on-ground workforce and interpreted as per your business goals. The road to resolving this challenge is straight: replace generic, off-the-shelf commercial maps with customized map stacks.

Types of Hyperlocal Mapping Solutions

Automation boosts efficiency. Let’s look at how AI and machine learning-driven hyperlocal mapping solutions are helping businesses build a competitive edge by optimizing route planning.

Last-mile optimization: The last mile of a delivery supply chain is known to be notoriously tricky and prone to inefficiencies. For example, In a residential complex having two entry gates, a delivery ninja needs to reach the location near gate 1. A hyperlocal mapping solution will help him avoid a long-cut and use the nearest entry point.

Navigating densely populated pockets: In emerging economies, where space is often in short supply, it’s common to find marketplaces where shops are packed cheek-by-jowl. Finding the right spot can be done by using hyperlocal maps easily.

Managing road restrictions: City centres usually restrict the entry of heavy vehicles during business hours. Having this information at hand can help freight companies plan fleet movement accordingly to ensure better ETAs.

Temporary road closures: Be it Covid red zones, marathon routes, car-free Sundays or a political rally – and it’s all to be managed by local teams to make your map truly hyperlocal.

Accessibility: Having a custom map stack can help businesses fine-tune their solutions, to work with detailed road topographies, be it the width of a road, lane counts or direction of travel specific to your business.

Why Companies need Custom Map Stacks

Custom map stacks help companies to optimize route planning, provide precise ETAs, seamlessly allocate vehicles, save time, cut costs and eliminate the error. Skilled mapping specialists can create maps that are customized as per your unique work requirements, as well as build AI models to seamlessly support your business.

Custom map stacks use your private and proprietary data to create maps that cover every aspect of your business. Customized maps `listen’ to you and give you control over your maps. Your maps turn into an integral infrastructural asset for your business.

Ajay Bulusu, Co-Founder, Nextbillion.ai

Custom maps can either be hosted on cloud or on-premise, to provide high throughputs and low latencies to meet your exacting engineering platform needs. Furthermore, it plugs all leakage-points and keeps your data safe and in-house.

Moreover, custom map stacks cost much lesser than commercial stacks as you don’t pay for data that you don’t need. Commercial mapping providers charge a set tariff that covers its entire mapping data, even though you may be using it only for a few cities or neighbourhoods, where you do business.

The need of the hour is to have a real-time navigational feature based on hyperlocal maps that not only enhances the overall delivery experience for the customer but also enables organisations to become agile and flexible to minuscule needs of each sector. We can see a growing affinity towards deep tech solutions among enterprises to address their CX and Opex needs.

Enterprises are now ready to move on to more advanced and customised solutions for their businesses from the generic cacophony of the technology solution. The golden trio of hyper localisation: Cost, Customisation and Control will ensure that you are ahead of the game, irrespective of the market and geographical constraints. Hyperlocal is not a fad but a fact that gives enterprises a vantage point to expand and extend their reach, without compromising on the quality of service.