Mapping and location intelligence platforms

Maps and location data, the one kind of data that almost every other kind is joined to

Take an online electronics store in Bengaluru. Every order it takes has an address. Every delivery follows a route on a map. And when the store decides where to open its next warehouse, the first question is simple: where are our customers?

Location is the one kind of data that almost every other kind ends up joined to. An order, a customer, a mobile tower and a flood all happen somewhere.

A map is a dataset, like the ones sold in Market Segment 8.3, Market research and market intelligence providers. It is gathered from satellites, aircraft, cars and surveyors. It has to be updated all the time, because roads, buildings and shops keep changing. And it is sold on subscription.

A map is also software. Companies use it to ask questions of their own data by place:

Where are our customers?
Where is our mobile network weakest?
How far will the flood reach?

A map is a dataset, gathered from satellites, aircraft, cars and surveyors, updated all the time and sold on subscription; it is also software, a GIS that lets a company ask questions of its own data by place.

Software that stores and analyses data by location is called a geographic information system, or GIS. The data itself is called geospatial data: data about places on the earth.

The buyers are companies whose business depends on place. They include carmakers, delivery and logistics companies, governments, electricity and water companies, retailers, insurers and telecom operators.

The best-known maps, Google Maps and Apple Maps, are covered elsewhere. (More on them in Google and Apple, in the big-tech collection.) MapmyIndia, India's own mapping company, is not covered in this Market Segment. Indian satellite imaging start-ups, such as Pixxel and GalaxEye, are covered elsewhere. (More on them in Market Segment 39.3, Earth observation and space surveillance, in Industry Vertical 39, Aerospace, defence and space.)

Every company named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Famous companies that don't actively hire software engineers in India are left out.

This Market Segment has two sub-segments:

The map itself: the companies that make and sell the map, and the software for analysing anything on it

The ground seen from above: images taken from drones and aircraft, which measure what the map can't show

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The map itself
The ground seen from above

The map itself

Mapping platforms, high-definition maps for vehicles, geographic information systems (GIS)

Back to the online store from the start of this Market Segment. Its delivery partner's vans follow routes planned on a digital map. That map, and the software that plans on it, is sold by the companies in this sub-segment.

HERE Technologies

makes maps and location data for cars and for businesses. Audi, BMW and Daimler bought it from Nokia in 2015, and Intel, Mitsubishi and NTT later became shareholders too. The carmakers wanted a map for their cars that was not controlled by Google or Apple. HERE sells three main things:

High-definition maps, detailed enough for a car to know which lane it is in.
Speed-limit and hazard data for driver assistance: the features that warn the driver, or help the car steer and brake.
A location platform, through which a fleet or logistics company uses the same map, for example to plan delivery routes.

HERE's Mumbai team works on its map and location platform. (More on HERE's work for cars in Market Segment 38.2, Autonomous driving and ADAS, in Industry Vertical 38, Automotive and mobility.)

Esri

with engineers in Delhi and Bengaluru, makes ArcGIS. ArcGIS is the geographic information system that governments, utilities and planners have used for decades. Utilities are the companies that supply electricity, water and gas. They use ArcGIS to store and analyse anything with a location, such as roads, pipes, power lines and plots of land. Every newer mapping tool is measured against it.

On a map for people the road is a line to plan a route on; a high-definition map is detailed enough for a car to know which lane it is in, with speed limits and hazards for driver assistance.

TomTom, Mapbox and Foursquare are not covered in this Market Segment.

The ground seen from above

Aerial and drone imagery, geospatial AI, aerial property data, GIS for networks

A map shows what is where. It can't show how much earth was dug out of a mine this month, or whether a roof was damaged in last night's storm. For that, someone has to look from above, with drones, aircraft or satellites. Geospatial AI is software that reads these images and measures things from them automatically.

AEREO

an Indian company in Bengaluru, flies drones over mines, construction sites and villages. It turns the images into surveys, measurements of how much material has been moved, and progress reports. In villages, such surveys are used to draw up land records. Like the data vendors in Market Segment 8.3, Market research and market intelligence providers, AEREO sells data. Its data is about the ground. (More on AEREO in Market Segment 39.3, Earth observation and space surveillance, in Industry Vertical 39, Aerospace, defence and space.)

Propheus

a young company run from California with engineers in Bengaluru, sells a detailed digital picture of places, called its Digital Atlas. Retailers and consumer brands use it to decide where to open a shop and what to stock in it. The online store from the start of this Market Segment would face this question if it opened its first shop in Pune.

Two companies covered mainly in other Market Segments use the same kind of data for their own industries:

Eagleview

with engineers in Bengaluru, flies aircraft over American cities. Its images are detailed enough to measure a roof from. It sells these measurements to insurers and roofing companies, with any damage detected automatically. (More on Eagleview in Market Segment 41.1, Construction tech, in Industry Vertical 41, Proptech.)

Lepton Software

with engineers in Delhi, makes software that plans a mobile or fibre network on a map. It also keeps a record of every tower, cable and piece of equipment in that network. It is a geographic information system built for one industry. (More on Lepton Software in Market Segment 1.1, Telecom equipment and operators, in Industry Vertical 1, Networking and telecom.)

Drones and aircraft, and next satellites, look at the ground from above; geospatial AI reads the images and measures from them, such as the material moved at a mine, land records for a village or a roof's size and damage.

The map that updates itself.

Maps used to be surveyed by people on the ground. Now they are increasingly worked out automatically. The sources are the cameras in every car, the drone over the site and the aircraft over the city, and AI models read the images. HERE's high-definition maps and Eagleview's automated damage detection are the two ends of this change in this Market Segment. The satellite start-ups mentioned at the start of this Market Segment are its next source.

That is location data: the map that says what is where, the software that asks questions by place, and the images from above that show how the ground is changing. For the online store, it answers where its customers are, how to reach them and where to open next.

Who they hire

Who these companies hire, and for what, is on What analytics and data providers hire for.

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