Mint Explainer: Ola Maps, MapMyIndia, Google and the nationalism conundrum

New Delhi: On 8 July, Bhavish Aggarwal, cofounder of ANI Technologies, the parent of ride-hailing platform Olacabs, electric vehicle firm Ola Electric and AI upstart Krutrim, announced Ola Maps on social media platform X.

Aggarwal claimed that the product “outperformed competitors on location, search and arrival time accuracy, as well as search latency.”

Three weeks and some amount of ruckus later, Aggarwal’s Ola Maps found itself at the receiving end of a legal notice even as he went after global mapping market leader Google with undertones of nationalism and big promises of subsidized pricing. Mint breaks down the issues that have fuelled this controversy.

The controversy

The Ola Maps controversy raises multiple issues. It has highlighted the plight of startups looking to take on Google's massive might, which not only dominates Maps but also accounts for over 90% of smartphones in the country.

It also brings to the fore a dispute around how Ola Maps was built, with MapMyIndia claiming that the Ola Maps product violated copyrighted material owned by it, including proprietary data and features. These factors were subsequently elaborated in a notice to Ola on 29 July.

The notice in question was served by CE Info Systems Ltd, the publicly listed parent firm of homegrown mapping firm, MapMyIndia. While the veracity of the claims is yet to be proven, the notice in question has raised a number of key points in conversations around mapping products and their recent claims.

What MapMyIndia and Ola Maps say

The notice from MapMyIndia to Ola Maps said, “Our client’s exclusive data has been copied or derived by you to further your illegal motive and for your unjust commercial gains. Your assertion that you have developed an API (application programming interface) and map data for Ola Maps solely through open maps is factually incorrect and not tenable."

"By indulging in such unscrupulous and illegal activities, you have acted in blatant defiance of the terms and conditions of the agreement, and have further infringed the copyright vested exclusively in our client, pertaining to the source code,” the notice added.

Ola Maps has, for now, denied all allegations. However, the entire incident has raised questions about Aggarwal’s nationalistic rhetoric.

The executive, whose company Ola Electric’s initial public offering (IPO) opened Friday, has been vocal about using narratives with nationalistic undertones. He claims to have “exited” Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, and is also building what he has claimed to be an India-focused foundational model, Krutrim.

“We’ve been using western apps to map India for too long and they don’t get our unique challenges: street names, urban changes, complex traffic, non-standard roads etc. Ola Maps tackles these with AI-powered India-specific algorithms, real-time data from millions of vehicles, leveraging and contributing massively to open source (5 million+ edits just last year!),” Aggarwal tweeted on 8 July.

What are the concerns

Three senior executives working across the technology industry and aware of Ola’s new Maps platform told Mint on conditions of anonymity that Aggarwal would have fared better by focusing solely on building a custom mapping layer for his company, rather than taking what has been described as an “us versus them” approach.

“By the looks of it, what Ola appears to have done is use the Open-Source Maps (OSM) application interface to build a custom mapping product for its mobility services. There’s nothing wrong with this—absolutely anyone can take an open-source product and build on top of it,” one of the executives cited above said.

“What doesn’t seem right is that one of India’s most prominent startup founders is using his credibility and equity to simply push a nationalistic narrative on his products—instead of focusing just on his products and offering tangible proof of innovation to those who question him and his venture,” the person added.

To be sure, Aggarwal is not necessarily wrong in his move. Even if Ola’s products were developed as open-source, there’s no real fault in doing so, said a veteran industry consultant, who also requested anonymity due to conflict of interest.

“By definition, open-source software lets developers take the platform as a base, and build custom products on top of it. They can even apply for a copyright on a product built on top of an open-source base, as long as they can prove that their custom innovation is worthy of copyright protection,” the consultant added.

But, the concerns are around claims of portraying divisive innovation from a spotlight-happy chief executive.

Meanwhile, the IPO of Ola Electric has seen the company’s valuation being slashed by 25%, down to $4 billion, from $5.4 billion at its last private funding round of $140 million led by Temasek in September last year. Despite this decline in valuation, Ola’s IPO is expected to be the biggest of this year, with the company expected to raise $734 million through the offer.

Despite Ola’s market leadership in two-wheelers, the company is yet to be profitable. In FY24, Ola Electric narrowed its losses to $124.2 million ( ₹1,040.2 crore). There are concerns about the company, too.

Also Read: Will investors greet Ola IPO at lower valuation?

“Ola Electric’s high labour attrition rate poses significant challenges to its operations and growth. A high turnover rate can disrupt production processes, hinder knowledge transfer, and negatively impact employee morale,” Sonam Shrivastava, founder and fund manager at Wright Research told Mint.

Questions that lie ahead

This controversy raises two fundamental questions: One, whether Aggarwal’s Ola has indeed borrowed data from a potential rival, and two, why an ‘Indian’ map is necessary.

For the first, Aggarwal has denied all allegations—even suggesting that mapping isn’t a business avenue for Ola to focus on. At a pre-IPO press conference on Wednesday, Aggarwal said about MapMyIndia’s notice: “It was very opportunistic of them. Ola is not in the Maps business. We will respond to them at the right time.”

Rohan Verma, chief executive of MapMyIndia, declined to comment on the matter, stating that the company will only speak publicly when there is more clarity.

As for the second question, it’s important to understand where we stand today. Google Maps is estimated to account for over 80% of the entire mapping market in India—including automotive maps. On mobile phones, this share is well above 95%, as per industry sources. Even without taking the rights and wrongs into account, competition should be beneficial in any industry.

Google, on this note, has also reduced its pricing for enterprise access to the Google Maps platform. The latter claimed, in a blog post, that effective pricing for its products were lowered by up to 70%. Aggarwal, in a tweet on 17 July suggested that Google’s pricing revision was in response to the unveiling of the Ola Maps platform—a statement that appears to be in contradiction to what he said at Wednesday’s pre-IPO press conference.

Following up with a further tweet on 18 July, Aggarwal extensively announced a lowered pricing structure for Ola Maps—which includes multiple years of free access to this mapping platform for any enterprise.

However, each of the executives cited above said that unless Ola publishes a transparent set of details on its mapping development, data collection and collation process, algorithms and logic, and more for third-party scrutiny, the service is unlikely to draw tangible and profitable enterprise eyeballs.

The veteran consultant cited above, on this note, further added, “Google Maps was not built in a day. MapMyIndia, too, has been going after Google with its nationalist rhetoric for a while—but that hasn’t moved the needle enough to particularly concern Google. For the most part, Google’s mapping services have become ubiquitous in the country.”

What, therefore, remains unanswered is the objective behind such a move: if Ola is “not in the maps business”, what good does all the nationalist rhetoric do for the brand?

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