Bhavish Aggarwal, the visionary behind Ola, is galvanizing developers to transition from Google Maps to Ola Maps. To entice developers, Ola is offering an enticing proposition: a year of complimentary access to Ola Maps on the company’s Krutrim Cloud, supplemented with over ₹100 crore in free credits. This strategic move follows Ola’s substitution of Google Maps with its proprietary Ola Maps, resulting in annual savings of approximately ₹100 crore. Additionally, Aggarwal has recently orchestrated the migration of Ola’s workload from Microsoft Azure to Krutrim Cloud.

“Post #ExitAzure, it’s time for Indian developers to #ExitGoogleMaps! One-year free access to Ola Maps on @Krutrim, more than ₹100 crore in free credits,” Aggarwal proclaimed on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday.

Aggarwal emphasized the limitations of Western mapping applications, which often fail to capture India’s unique topographical challenges such as erratic street names, rapid urbanization, intricate traffic patterns, and non-standardized roads. Ola Maps, equipped with AI-powered, India-specific algorithms, addresses these challenges. The platform leverages real-time data from millions of vehicles and significantly contributes to open-source projects, boasting over 5 million edits in the past year alone.

In a recent blog post, Ola elaborated on its initiative. In 2021, as the world began emerging from the pandemic, Ola envisioned developing groundbreaking features for its customer and partner apps in Ola Mobility. However, dependence on Western mapping providers, which did not prioritize India, stymied these ambitions.

“Our reliance on Western mapping providers, who did not prioritize India, severely limited our ability to implement these features. To truly serve our users and push the boundaries of mobility, we needed an alternative better suited to the Indian market. This realization led to the creation of Ola Maps,” the blog post stated.

Ola aims to forge maps not just for contemporary needs but for the future of mobility innovations, including autonomous vehicles, flying taxis, and drones. This necessitates maps that are more detailed, dynamic, and intelligent than ever before. Ola embarked on this ambitious journey three years ago.

Navigating Unique Challenges

Existing mapping providers fail to address challenges specific to Indian users, presenting unique opportunities for Ola and Indian developers. Many streets and rural areas remain either unmapped or inadequately mapped, with street names showing variations and inconsistencies. Frequent changes to streets, potholes, and road quality issues further complicate mapping, impacting travel time and safety.

Providing accurate, up-to-date maps enhances navigation, travel planning, and user satisfaction. Ola Maps aims to include features tailored to local needs, such as multi-language support, local business listings, and culturally relevant landmarks, while ensuring critical data remains within Indian borders.

Addressing these challenges is arduous. Ola leverages AI, open-source resources, and the vast Indian talent pool to build efficient, contextually relevant, accurate, and safer maps. Ola Maps utilizes a diverse set of data sources, sending updates in near real-time for the most accurate mapping data possible. The firm’s AI-driven data systems harness real-time data from millions of vehicles, a fleet of Ola S1 scooters with 360-degree cameras, open-source government data repositories, OpenStreetMap, partnerships, and proprietary sources.

These systems help build essential map features such as roads, points of interest, street furniture, building geometry, and traffic signals. Over the past year, Ola has contributed 5.43 million edits to OpenStreetMap.

A sophisticated data platform ingests over 5 million messages per second from numerous sensors and telemetry sources. Ola Maps is now integrated across the Ola ecosystem, with tens of thousands of customers using it daily on their scooters and the Ola Electric app for guided commutes. The platform handles over a million search queries daily for Ola Electric users.

Navigating Unique Challenges

Existing mapping providers do not fully address the unique challenges necessary for a seamless experience in India. Many streets and rural areas remain unmapped or poorly mapped, with street names often showing variations and inconsistencies. Frequent creation and closure of streets lead to outdated maps, while potholes and road quality issues impact travel time and safety.