Father-son duo looks back at the process of pioneering digital maps of 5,79,000 towns and villages, street level maps of over 4,000 cities and 1.8 million kilometres of road network, and how MapmyIndia got to know India, inside out

Rakesh Verma: By 2004, we realised digital maps would be a crowded market. We knew the only thing that could differentiate us from the crowd was a brand that people could rely on. Being a product company, we were nothing without a brand. The first step towards making a brand was to take it to consumers. So, we thought of the internet. Rohan Verma: I was in my first year of electrical engineering at Stanford University, US, when my father had this idea— web maps. These were early days of the internet. There had been a boom and bust but people hadn’t thought of many ways of making money through the internet. I began benchmarking the different models around the world for digital maps—companies like MapQuest, YahooMaps and Maporama. At that time, we weren’t really thinking about a consumer focus as opposed to a focus on enterprise clients. We were just excited by the possibilities of what we could do with this business. It took us three months to build the website models around the world for digital maps—companies like MapQuest, YahooMaps and Maporama. At that time, we weren’t really thinking about a consumer focus as opposed to a focus on enterprise clients. We were just excited by the possibilities of what we could do with this business. It took us three months to build the website of Sherpalo Ventures (who had invested in Google, Amazon and Zynga). Kleiner Perkins and Ram Shriram invested in us in August 2006. With money in the bank, we could focus on technology. Around this time, the world was moving from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. My father wanted us to upgrade, too. So, I took a quarter off from Stanford to do this. Soon, MapmyIndia became one of the first Web 2.0 technology portals in India. Rakesh Verma: Since then, we have raised $25 million in total, and reached four investors—Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Sherpalo Ventures, Nexus India Capital, and last year, Zenrin Co. As a product company, we needed a lot of upfront investment. Plus, our challenges were greater because we didn’t just create a brand, we created an entire category. We are thought leaders in the mapping and navigation solutions space in India. That was tough, we enjoy the advantages of being first movers and have been able to sustain our market share even when the market was growing. Yet, not everybody agreed with all our decisions. When we brought out our GPS device Navigator in 2007, it was new for India. People wondered why we were doing this. Some of our investors felt we should not have entered this space on our own. Our investors felt we should just supply maps to manufacturers. But, we knew we were going the right way. After its launch, the brand really started building on its own. In 2004, we’d entered the internet space. of Sherpalo Ventures (who had invested in Google, Amazon and Zynga). Kleiner Perkins and Ram Shriram invested in us in August 2006. With money in the bank, we could focus on technology. Around this time, the world was moving from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. My father wanted us to upgrade, too. So, I took a quarter off from Stanford to do this. Soon, MapmyIndia became one of the first Web 2.0 technology portals in India. Rakesh Verma: Since then, we have raised $25 million in total, and reached four investors—Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Sherpalo Ventures, Nexus India Capital, and last year, Zenrin Co. As a product company, we needed a lot of upfront investment. Plus, our challenges were greater because we didn’t just create a brand, we created an entire category. We are thought leaders in the mapping and navigation solutions space in India. That was tough, we enjoy the advantages of being first movers and have been able to sustain our market share even when the market was growing. Yet, not everybody agreed with all our decisions. When we brought out our GPS device Navigator in 2007, it was new for India. People wondered why we were doing this. Some of our investors felt we should not have entered this space on our own. Our investors felt we should just supply maps to manufacturers. But, we knew we were going the right way. After its launch, the brand really started building on its own. In 2004, we’d entered the internet space. of Sherpalo Ventures (who had invested in Google, Amazon and Zynga). Kleiner Perkins and Ram Shriram invested in us in August 2006. With money in the bank, we could focus on technology. Around this time, the world was moving from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. My father wanted us to upgrade, too. So, I took a quarter off from Stanford to do this. Soon, MapmyIndia became one of the first Web 2.0 technology portals in India. Rakesh Verma: Since then, we have raised $25 million in total, and reached four investors—Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Sherpalo Ventures, Nexus India Capital, and last year, Zenrin Co. As a product company, we needed a lot of upfront investment. Plus, our challenges were greater because we didn’t just create a brand, we created an entire category. We are thought leaders in the mapping and navigation solutions space in India. That was tough, we enjoy the advantages of being first movers and have been able to sustain our market share even when the market was growing. Yet, not everybody agreed with all our decisions. When we brought out our GPS device Navigator in 2007, it was new for India. People wondered why we were doing this. Some of our investors felt we should not have entered this space on our own. Our investors felt we should just supply maps to manufacturers. But, we knew we were going the right way. After its launch, the brand really started building on its own. In 2004, we’d entered the internet space. In 2007, we were moving from being a software to a hardware company. Rohan Verma: Even though we were a small company, we gave in to the demands of professionals, and went in for television and print advertising campaigns in 2008-09. But what we did well and differently from other players was that when we started selling devices in 2007, we invested in educating the market. We hired 150 sales people on the ground. This built long-lasting value. When people went to buy our product, we had a guy at the retail point. That organically created, and helped perpetuate what the GPS was. This kind of street presence was a conventional FMCG approach but it was unconventional for a company of our size. Investing in a market before it’s even born is what forerunners do. That has had a lasting brand impact— our customers associate these products for us. Rakesh Verma: After the GPS device in 2007, we’ve launched products like mobile maps, navigation systems and tracking devices. We’ve grown over 600 per cent over the past three years. Today, 75 per cent of our revenue comes from consumer business. Rohan Verma: By the time I was finishing up at Stanford in 2007, the company had achieved a lot. Our people had done a great job, yet we had done only half of what we could do with the portal. Going forward, we don’t want to “complexify” our maps but we certainly want to personalise it. Our maps should know you.