CE Info Systems is India's leading navigable map and GIS solutions provider since 1994. The company was founded in 1992 by entrepreneur couple Rakesh and Rashmi Verma, who had returned after a 12 year stint in the US working for General Motors and IBM respectively. The company's very initial focus was on providing training and solutions on the IBM mainframe platform. A chance meeting between the promoter couple and representatives of MapInfo software, a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) tool used for map creation and analysis, led to CE Info's decision to get into mapping and GIS. At that time, digital maps were unavailable for India, and GIS was not a word commonly known. CE Info became the first distributor for MapInfo in 1994, and set about the massive and pioneering task of mapping out all of India.

1994 - 2004: Building the base map data, and serving the enterprise GIS market

Over the next 10 years, from 1994 to 2004, the company focused single-mindedly on creating the complete India map data product. The challenges the company faced in creating this massive dataset were two-fold: how to bear the large amount of investment needed to build the data, and how to ensure the huge database stayed relevant and up-to-date. The company's strategy to address these challenges was elegant and simple - provide enterprises with GIS solutions on top of the map data that added significant tangible benefits to their business operations and planning. In this way, the company was able to generate a revenue stream to drive future investments into building the map data. And because the enterprises were using it for their operations on a daily basis, they would provide the necessary feedback to ensure currency of the data. For example, in 1995 when Coca Cola wanted to re-enter India, the company provided them help in planning their logistics and distribution of bottles from the bottling plants to almost every town and village across India. Similarly, in 1996 when Hutch (now Essar) was deciding where to place their towers based on demand, CE Info built the map data and model on top of it to recommend the locations. Thus, the company focused from 1994 to 2004 in building out the map data set for India and in the process developed a customer list of over 500 large enterprises.

2004 - Current: Bringing maps to end consumers (MapmyIndia), and making the map navigable

In 2004, the company analyzed the mapping trends and application around the world, and saw that in US and Europe, maps had become commonly used by individual consumers. Online map portals such as Yahoo Maps and Mapquest were very popular (Google Maps had not released then, it came online in Feb 2005) and in Europe people were beginning to get familiar with GPS navigation devices that could guide a person while driving to his destination.

With a strong desire to place India among the elite countries where maps had substantially improved the quality of everyday life of people, CE Info decided to introduce something revolutionary for Indian consumers: MapmyIndia.

MapmyIndia.com, launched in September 2004, became India's first interactive maps and directions portal. For the first time users could zoom and move the map across all of India, and search for addresses and points of interest such as ATMs etc. on the map. Over the last three years, MapmyIndia.com has taken incredible strides, becoming one of India's first web 2.0 portals when it released its AJAX version in September 2006, and with the latest version release, has helped searching and getting directions from any point to any point in India very easy, relevant and helpful. MapmyIndia.com has helped map-enable other portals as well with their store locator (find the nearest) solution, such as MakemyTrip, MagicBricks, online portals of Hyundai, Skoda and Bose India etc.

The launch of MapmyIndia.com focused the company's efforts on building a navigable map, which could enable key consumer location based services such as navigation, on the internet, via mobile phones, and even via GPS navigation devices. MapmyIndia released the most comprehensive navigable map for India in 2006 and brought Yahoo! Maps to India, supplying them the map data to create their own online portal. Recently, MapmyIndia's navigable map also started powering Airtel GPS Navigation on the Blackberry, with more phones in the offing. MapmyIndia's comprehensive map coverage of India, unparalleled in industry, has set the ball rolling to power many more navigation and location based services coming to India, as MapmyIndia is aggressively inviting and partnering leading players from India and around the world to tap the vast potential Indian consumer market.