Days after Google announced it has started its effort to introduce 3-D ‘walk through’ maps for Indian cities, it’s biggest competitor in India – MapmyIndia.com – has opened up its fine-grained map to the public for free.
The new maps, available on maps.mapmyindia.com, will show right up to the house number in its free version. Usually, mapping companies don’t offer fine-grained details on their free products. The service will be available in 18 cities initially.
“This is the first time such information has been made available for free in the public domain,” said Rohan Verma, Director, MapmyIndia.
The move is seen as a response to multinational giant Google’s serious designs on the Indian map market. Google is by far the biggest player in free map service in India and abroad and has already dented the market for paid maps considerably. Unlike traditional map companies, Google makes money from its maps through adjacent services such as business listings and suggestions built into it.
“You can simply zoom to the last level on MapmyIndia Maps and see exact locations on the map for residential house numbers, c
commercial building addresses and names, apartment complexes, businesses and points of interest in 18 major cities,” the company said.
Like Google, it has included a direction service as well.
Though you cannot search by house-number yet, the feature will soon be added, the firm said.
