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The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with geospatial technology company, MapmyIndia, for developing a fully indigenous mapping portal and geospatial services for India based on location-based software service and artificial intelligence-based solutions.

“Through the MoU, the combined geospatial expertise of the Department and CE Info Systems (MapmyIndia) will be leveraged through their respective Geoportals,” according to a statement released by ISRO.

This collaboration will enable both the teams to jointly identify and build holistic geospatial solutions utilising the Earth Observation Datasets, NavIC, Web Services and APIs available in MapmyIndia, Bhuvan, VEDAS and MOSDAC Geoportals, according to the statement.

This collaboration is also aimed at providing more detailed, “privacy-centric, hyper local and indigenous mapping solution for Indians.”

Commenting on the collaboration, Rohan Verma, CEO and Executive Director, MapmyIndia, said, “This partnership with ISRO heralds new dawn of Aatmanirbhar Bharat in the strategic area of maps and geospatial technologies. I’d like to thank first and foremost our honourable Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi ji, for his clarion call for an ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ and ‘Vocal for Local’ and for him personally driving reforms in space and mapping sectors.”

Through the combined partnership of ISRO and MapmyIndia, users will be able to leverage each other’s strengths and this will specifically benefit in various map-based analytics and insights about weather, pollution, agricultural output, land use changes, flood and landslide disasters, etc. 

MapmyIndia was launched in 1995 as CE infosystems by Rakesh Verma and Rashmi Verma as India did not have a map-reading culture like the US. The company has grown its prowess with location technology, specifically in the areas of navigation, tracking, IoT, and analytics to provide products, services, and solutions to over 10 million end users – be it consumers, enterprises, or the government.

With ISRO and the government announcing new spacetech reforms for supporting the private spacetech ecosystem in India, several players are leveraging the opportunity to strengthen the sector.