The Hindu Business Line : Find your way to my place

IN the maze of streets and lanes that constitute most urban areas in India, guiding someone to your home or office can be a challenge. Most often, the easiest and most reliable way to do this is to give a visitor directions that go something like this: "Turn left at the supermarket, drive 500 meters, turn right immediately after the juice shop and stop at the second building on the right; the one with the red gate."

Now, CE Info Systems Pvt Ltd, a New Delhi-based company, has launched an online service that uses a similar approach to help people find their way around urban locations in the country. Called eLocation, this service is offered in sync with the company's map portal, mapmyindia.com, that has street-level maps for some 160 cities across the country, says Rakesh Verma, Managing Director, CE Info Systems Pvt Ltd.

The portal, launched last year, offers searchable maps and directions between any two locations in the country and now the eLocation service, he says.

The first step in using eLocation is to register at mapmyindia.com and then create a unique eLocation by following the step-by-step guide on the site. Once an eLocation has been created, the information it will present includes the user's address and detailed driving directions from the nearest landmark to the user's home or office. This unique eLocation can then be given to others just like one gives out a telephone number.

When an eLocation is entered into the appropriate search box on the mapmyindia Web site, it will throw up all the information the user has entered, including the driving directions from the nearest landmark. This information can be used to find the user's location.

"Using e-mail you can reach someone online. Using eLocation, you can reach someone in the real world," Verma claims. Individuals, corporates and even Government organisations can use this service. In fact, in the one month since the launch of the eLocation service, around 1,000 eLocations have been created, he says.

While basic maps and driving directions to an eLocation are available as part of the site's free or basic service, users can pay Rs 5,000 a year to subscribe to mapmyindia's premium offering. Premium users get access to the most detailed maps for six metros and slightly less detailed maps for the remaining cities in the database, he says. Similarly, premium service users can enter an eLocation ID and get detailed, step-by-step route maps from anywhere in the city to a specific eLocation. Soon, premium users will also have access to eLocation and eTrips — another new service from the company — on their mobile phone, he says.

According to Verma, the eTrips service that will shortly be offered on mobile phones will enable users to get distances and possible routes between the six metros and other cities. This service, along with eLocation on mobile phones, is expected to grow into an important revenue stream for the company.

Similarly, the company expects mapmyindia.com to generate additional revenues, both from online advertisements and also from premium memberships. Premium subscriptions can also act as an instant resource for corporates in areas such as internal decision-making, logistics control and creation of route plans for sales teams, he says.

However, one drawback found on the mapmyindia site is that in some instances, maps are incomplete or do not incorporate the latest information. According to Verma, such gaps are deliberate and have been introduced because the company wants to protect its intellectual property and prevent piracy of its database of maps, built up over the last 10 years.

sankarmr@thehindu.co.in

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