Capitalism would require that for any credible alternative to exist, either as a product or a service, it must fulfil at least two out of three conditions:

It should be a better product than competitors
It should be a more cost-effective alternative than rivals
It should do the bare minimum that it promises to accomplish

Last week, Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal announced that his company is launching Ola Maps—described as a “true alternative to global mapping giants”. And while it’s still early days, Aggarwal’s latest venture seems to fail on all three of the above counts.

Here’s an example: “It [Ola Maps] wasn’t as accurate as Google so the auto driver used Google Maps for navigation instead,” a Mumbai-based Ola Cabs user told The Morning Context.

Aggarwal’s experiment, a bid to outdo Google Maps comes amid similar moves by him in the recent past to push for “Indian alternatives” to everything Western. In May, Aggarwal decided to do away with Ola's cloud service provider—Microsoft-owned Azure—and channel the workload to in-house AI venture Krutrim. Interestingly, it all began with LinkedIn’s “wokeness”. Ola Maps will be Aggarwal’s fourth initiative after ride-hailing app Ola Cabs, Ola Electric and Krutrim. We have previously written about Aggarwal’s problem of plenty, especially as he gears up to list his EV business.

Just to be clear, Ola Maps is not the only native mapping technology that India has, nor is it the first. There’s MapmyIndia, which already offers similar solutions.

With Ola Maps, Aggarwal claims he can cut expenses by Rs 100 crore a year, which he was otherwise spending on Google Maps. We may be underscoring the obvious here but Ola’s move might seem a little too ambitious if it’s trying to be at par with Alphabet-owned Google Maps, an undisputed leader in the mapping business for nearly two decades. Even Apple Maps, launched in 2012, could not outdo Google Maps. And here’s why Ola Maps could be facing the same issues.

The source: The first step to building a mapping software is collecting data and here’s where Ola is already behind.

“Ola Maps could be an ambitious initiative for the company. Google gets it from phones, maps, volunteering, satellites and more. Ola Maps scaling up to this would be amazing. But the question is, how? They don’t have an ecosystem like Google. They are looking to cover almost two decades of data collected from the biggest player in this business,” explains Bengaluru-based software engineer Tushar Shahi.

Ola has said that it will largely use OpenStreetMap (OSM) and government and proprietary sources to collect basic data to build essential map features such as roads, points of interest (POIs) and traffic signals.

OpenStreetMap is a free and open geographic database, maintained by a community of volunteers. OSM’s maps will be integrated with Ola Maps and include road geometries and POIs. Proprietary data refers to internal data collected through sensor fusion from vehicles, signals from its fleet of drivers and community feedback. Here’s where it could run into issues.

Google Maps uses high-resolution satellite imagery, GPS signals and geographic information systems for collecting data. Plus, it also has a huge community of users—heavily reliant on the app for navigation—who keep sharing feedback. Its data is a mix of crowdsourcing, user contributions and partnerships with governments and authorities worldwide.

“The data that Ola has gathered might contain biases because the source is small and it has not yet been used by masses. Google has a huge database and has been perfecting its maps through reviews, user community, open source community and more. So I think it’s going to take some time for Ola to perfect their maps and algorithms. The more data they collect, the better it is going to be in the future,” an AI developer who did not wish to be named told TMC.

Then there’s also areas for which Ola won’t have enough data.

“Since Ola relies on a combination of its own data and OSM, there will be challenges when operating in a new area where their own vehicles have not entered. They can’t get the details from that area besides relying on OSM, which depends on volunteers to update and maintain it,” says Shahi.

This could be tricky because accuracy for maps is of vital importance. In its absence, one might just try to drive their vehicle through a field, because maps said so!

But Ola and its founder seem to be glossing over these challenges in their quest to provide a map service that understands the needs of Indians and Indian roads.

A different set of challenges: Ola says its maps service is aimed at understanding and fixing the issues pertaining to Indian roads that Western apps couldn’t understand. This includes data on incomplete mapping coverage, inconsistent street names, potholes and road quality issues. It also claims that its base map will contain detailed information on land use, water bodies, transportation networks and more which they will enhance with advanced routing services that provide distance calculations, directions and estimated time of arrival.

“It would be easy for consumers to report potholes. For instance, in the case of Google Maps, users notify and add to the route that there's an obstruction and it's quite accurate most of the time. If Ola makes it open to the public like Google Maps, then it can get some user reviews,” said the AI developer quoted earlier. “I don't see how Ola Maps is going to take a share of the market from Google Maps. They are trying to reinvent the wheel when we already have Google Maps,” they added.

While there’s no way to say whether it will be able to meet its objectives in the future, right now, there are quite a few issues.

For instance, one Ola user posted on X (earlier Twitter) that thanks to Ola Maps, their cab went 4 km away from the actual pick-up location. The Mumbai-based rider quoted earlier in the story told The Morning Context that he was astonished to see many location tags on the app. “However, these tags were way off their actual position,” he said.

Currently, Ola Maps is open to use only for Ola entities, which includes Ola Electric scooters and Ola Cabs, as well as external developers. This is a fraction of users compared to Google Maps.

But, like we said before, the initiative might only get better with more users and user reviews. For that, Ola might need to offer incentives to existing Google Maps customers to penetrate this market. However, these efforts could divert Ola’s focus from its ride-hailing business which already faces stiff competition with new apps coming every year. (Read more: Ola's cab business is failing and Uber isn’t worried about Ola anymore)

“If Ola Maps starts giving wrong data, this will be a huge issue for Ola. ETA, estimated cost, anything could be wrong in the ride. It will reduce the trust from both users and drivers. With so many other options available, users might also churn to never return to the app. Although I would believe, such a large-scale update would have gone through rigorous testing,” says Shahi. But as we’ve written before, Aggarwal has a history of releasing products when they’re not ready. Could Ola Maps be one of them?

Why does Ola Maps exist?

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