In a country where 70% of the roads have neither a name nor a number, a quintessentially Indian tendency to rely on prominent landmarks for navigating through towns, cities and villages has impelled TomTom India to change the way the mapping company operates worldwide.

The wholly owned subsidiary of TomTom Inc, the Amsterdam-based supplier of navigation products for automobiles, has taken the better part of three years to complete mapping of 1.3 million km (of 1.6 million km) of paved roads in India, and declares that it is now ready for “turn-by-turn navigation.”

For TomTom, which has mapped 40 million km of roads worldwide, the Indian need to communicate a location in relation to a landmark has been a revelation, says Jocelyn Vigreux, General Manager and Senior VP, India. “How different can it be from anything I know?” he asks, following this with the exclamation, “It pretty much tops the line!”

“We were humble enough to accept that the market was drastically different from what we knew,” he says, adding that this trait was factored into its India plans. TomTom changed the way it was doing things and created a completely new feature inside its Via series of products, currently sourced from China, which were launched in the Indian market late last year.

TomTom’s focus now is on Personal Navigation Devices (PNDs), a nascent business that Vigreux believes, will present a huge opportunity in the years ahead, and map-making. Carmakers in India are actively looking at technology to develop broad infotainment systems, he says, and adds, “We have global relationships with OE makers, and we are in talks for partnerships in India.”

Another business that will in time come to India is navigation devices for commercial vehicles. “This is one of our business units overseas, and I see no reason not to do it here,” he remarks.

TomTom recently opened up an expanded map making facility at Pune, from where it also operates a back end support facility for overseas operations.

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