By Shereen Bhan, CNBC-TV18:

Asking for directions and scanning through complicated paper maps while on the move can be nerve-raking and extremely dangerous. So imagine a device that sits in your vehicle and helps you find your way effortlessly. That’s exactly what Rohan Verma a 22 year old Director and his company MapmyIndia thought of. Rohan Verma is a Stanford graduate and is the key navigator who drove MapmyIndia from being just a free mapping portal to a 3.5 inch hand-held GPS navigation device. His vision is to make maps and navigation an integral part of India’s basic infrastructure five years from now.

Rohan Verma said, “MapmyIndia is India’s premium quality digital maps and consumer navigation services. This sounds very complicated but what it means is that with MapmyIndia you will never get lost whether you are on the internet where you can access a free internet mapping portal and search for directions from Malviya Nagar to Khirki, Delhi to Mumbai or Delhi to Mussoorie whether you are on your mobile phone and you want to access the maps and get a turn by turn voice guidance, there is a voice guiding you through your journey with precise directions.” 

People are moving beyond a point where they just want to stop and ask people for directions.  In US travelers are guided through their journey via a GPS system in their cars. MapmyIndia has come up with a similar system in India thus assuring that one never gets lost.

Rohan Verma said, “We have become India’s leaders in map data and over 500 enterprises use our maps per say Yahoo, Airtel, General Motors, Coca Cola, Hyundai. You name any top company in any vertical and they probably are our customer because map data is like an infrastructure.

Using state of the art technology a MapmyIndia navigator can map 55,000 villages and towns, 150 cities as well as important landmarks. In fact in 18 major cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata you can even get information about the street, the locality and sub localities. Rohan Verma’s vision to map the country has found favour with Venture Capitalist firms like Ram Shriram's Sherpalo Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Nexus India.

Rohan Verma said, “MapmyIndia makes money in two ways through consumer products, mapping a navigator.  They are now planning to launch a MapmyIndia iNav, GPS navigation system for cars and mobile phones. The second way in which MapmyIndia makes money is through licensing of their maps and solutions to enterprises.

Navigators and the iNav are available at over 500 counters across the country. They are available in GM dealerships at large retailers such as Croma etc. Purchasing of these products add to MapmyIndia’s revenues. Enterprises use MapmyIndia maps to either make a business decision, such as deciding on a locality to start a site or a retail outlet. They try to figure whether they should open it in an area that has an urban dense population or to decide on Logistics of how they can transport products or material across the country. There are myriad other reasons why the maps are used by enterprises.

Rohan Verma is looking at improving the quality of his product by swinging in investment of USD 5 million, undeterred by competition.  Rohan Verma continues to move swiftly to ramp up MapmyIndia’s capabilities and stay ahead of the competition.

Rohan Verma remembers a time they came out with an internet mapping portal four years ago, people wondered why they were doing this when nobody would really use it. But he was confident the people would use it when they’ve seen how it could help.

“We entered the markets at the same time Yahoo had entered the Indian Markets, Google also came to India after us and that’s helped create a market. There are other players entering this field too but I am unperturbed by this competition as it only helps promote our product in the market. Our map data is better than anything else offered in the country, so every time a competitor comes in it works out well for us because they have the power to take the concept to the consumer and convince them of the benefits. In most cases that customer would opt for our product instead seeing that MapmyIndia’s map data is better.”, Verma said.