Ola picks up GeoSpoc to build next-gen location technologies

Ride hailing major Ola on October 5 announced the acquisition of GeoSpoc, a Pune-based provider of geospatial services.

As part of this deal, GeoSpoc cofounder Dhruva Rajan and his team of scientists and engineers will join Ola to develop technologies that will make mobility accessible, sustainable, personalised, and convenient across shared and personal vehicles, the company said in a statement. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

This acquisition comes close on heels of Ola Electric raising $200-million financing led by Falcon Edge, SoftBank and others, at a valuation of $3 billion.

Started in 2014, GeoSpoc specializes in geographic information system (GIS) and location-based technologies, delivering intelligence from location based analytics to its customers. It currently has presence in India, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Finland. Among its clients include Swiggy, TomTom, Starbucks, State Bank of India, Bajaj Finserv, Munich RE and Bajaj Allianz.

This acquisition is in line with the company's New Mobility strategy, wherein CEO Bhavish Aggarwal expects both shared and personal mobility to grow significantly in the country through a combination of purpose built electric vehicles lowering costs, digital retail driving convenience and the cloud enabling personalisation.

In September, Aggarwal said that Ola provides multi-modal mobility access to 100 million people through taxis, auto rickshaws, two-wheelers, day hires, and outstation rides, but it accounts for only 7 percent of the country's population.

In order to expand this to a larger audience, the company aims to make it more affordable and accessible by using electric vehicles customised for the diverse shared mobility needs. Ola also plans to expand its range of electric vehicles with more scooters, bikes and cars in the coming quarters.

These moves will require investments in next-gen technologies, including location and geospatial technologies, and advancements in satellite imagery conversion into real-time maps as well as 3D, HD and vector maps, Aggarwal said on October 5.

He added that maps will also have to improve in various ways as the penetration of shared and personal mobility gets deeper in the country. For instance, accurate and rich maps with "high user context" should be available to users beyond the first 100 million users and multi-modal transportation options will need geospatial intelligence to provide better suggestions to users.

"Maps will need to consider a three dimensional view of the world as aerial mobility models such as drones become more mainstream. Autonomous driving will need HD and 3D maps which will offer superior visualization, dynamic real time updates based on road, traffic and weather conditions" Aggarwal said.

Enhanced geo-spatial services will also help pave the way for improved urban planning such as clarity in road networks, better public transport and pre-empting traffic congestions, he said.

"We have the data and the expertise to build this utilising our deep understanding of consumer movements as well as our massive network of 2,3 and 4Ws (wheelers) that provide unprecedented geo-spatial details. We can layer this data with new sources such as satellite imagery and visual feeds from our network on-ground to build ‘Living Maps’ that embody the changing landscape of our world," Aggarwal said in the blogpost.

Ola’s core ride-hailing unit is also gearing up for its public market listing soon, for which it raised $500 million from Warburg Pincus and Temasek, giving early backers Tiger and Matrix a part exit from the company.