Ola To Come Up With Its Own Maps System For Vehicles & Apps

Mobility and electric vehicles major Ola is developing a dedicated maps system for its vehicles and apps and will launch the system soon.

Ola’s founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal confirmed the development in a tweet on Thursday (January 5). “Testing our own Ola maps! Will be live in the Ola app and our vehicles in a couple of months!” said Aggarwal.

According to the CEO, Ola is also developing a developer application program interface (API) to allow other app developers to install Ola Maps in their apps or vehicles. “Will also be making a dev API for all those who want to use world-class maps for India in their apps,” said Aggarwal in the tweet.

Ola’s maps services are currently powered by Google Maps and the in-house maps system will look to replace the same. 

The mobility major is entering the geospatial market which is dominated by Google, with MapmyIndia also a major player in the segment. Further, the Indian government has also produced a navigation system called the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System, or NavIC.

Ola’s maps system is first coming to its ride-sharing app and its suite of electric two-wheelers. The move might help the unicorn to improve the performance and credibility of its products. 

While further details on the maps system are not available, the company might have deployed the government’s NavIC system to build a maps service on top of the geospatial data.

The development comes after the cab aggregator announced it will be piloting an EV cab service in Bengaluru. Ola is starting with 1,000 EV cabs, with the mobility unicorn saying that the company will take the number to 10,000 cabs in the future.

Ola’s mobility business has come under criticism over the past few months, even as it made a comeback as the top player in the EV category. The cab aggregator has been accused of poor service quality and poor treatment of its gig workers.

In terms of service quality, users have alleged poor treatment, ride cancellations and payment issues while booking a cab with the app.

Further, in a recent report by Fairwork India Ratings 2022, Ola, Uber and Dunzo emerged as the worst performers in treating gig workers, thereby receiving a rating of zero each on a scale of 0-10.

On the other hand, the company’s EV business returned to the top after seeing registrations decline over the middle of 2022. In November 2022, Ola Electric saw the highest number of vehicle registrations with 16,246 units registered, per government data.