The woman who introduced digital maps to India

When you hear the word Digital Maps, you usually think of Google Maps. However, did you know that it was a woman who actually came up with the idea of introducing digital maps to India before Google itself?

This is the story of Rashmi Verma, the Co-Founder of MapmyIndia. Her story about digital maps started in 2005. Back then, there was no Google Maps in the market. People depended on asking directions from others or physical maps. The Internet was barely available back then in many places in India.

However, Rashmi was a visionary. She wanted to launch digital maps to the people of India to make their navigation easier. During that time, phones with GPS were not available. So her company provided their own devices. The devices worked on GPS and did not need any other connection either!

Her inspiration came in 1995. She saw a digital map of the US in an exhibition. She saw potential in the idea and thought that in a decade India would need digital maps as well.

Rashmi and her husband started their company. They worked hard and sacrificed even their salaries just so their employees could get paid.

Her success grew and the companies that used her mapping technology also grew. Today, the mapping solutions from MapmyIndia are being used by many companies. Some of the leading companies include Tata Motors, Hyundai, BMW, Ford, Jaguar, TVS Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra and others.

Furthermore, recently their company has worked on an application called Move. It is a real-time GPS tracker which gives the location of your vehicle on demand. Due to its ingenious design, the app was awarded the Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge.

Image Credit: Mapmyindia Website Screenshot

Image Reference: https://www.mapmyindia.com/