Google to slash Maps Platform pricing for Indian developers by up to 70% from August 1

Google is offering developers building for ONDC up to 90% off on select Google Maps Platform APIs.

Google is slashing the pricing of Google Maps Platform for developers in India by as much as 70 percent from August 1, 2024, as the company introduces a new country-specific pricing structure to make it easier to build location based solutions.

The tech giant is also partnering with Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) to offer additional discounts for developers building for ONDC for a limited period. This will result in up to 90 percent discount on select Google Maps Platform APIs that are used to drive ecommerce and adjacent use cases, the firm said.

Google, which announced this move at its developer event Google I/O Connect Bengaluru on July 17, said it will also start accepting payments in Indian Rupees (INR). Prior to this, India-based customers were charged in US dollars.

Google said this price reduction will make Google Maps Platform more accessible for developers to build location-based solutions in the country.

These announcements however come as Ola chief Bhavish Aggarwal has been publicly encouraging developers to adopt Ola Maps for their mapping needs by offering a free one-year access.

Aggarwal's artificial intelligence (AI) startup Krutrim introduced mapping and location-based services for developers via Ola Maps API in May, as reported first by Moneycontrol.

Aggarwal had previously stated that one of Krutrim's key differentiators will be providing services to developers on an "India-first" cost structure.

Earlier this month, Aggarwal had said that Ola Cabs had completely exited Google Maps and moved to its in-house Ola Maps. This measure is expected to save the company Rs 100 crore a year, he said.

In recent days, Aggarwal has posted screenshots on his social accounts, claiming growing adoption of the Ola Maps API.

A screenshot of Bhavish Aggarwal's post claiming growing adoption of the Ola Maps API.

Google stated that its new pricing structure will be available only to India-based customers that witness a large majority of usage in the country and are billed in India. It will monitor eligibility and may disqualify customers who do not meet these criteria from the reduced pricing structure.

From August 1, all new India-based customers will be billed in INR while existing customers can choose to be charged in INR, or continue to be charged in US dollars with their existing account.

Developers can use the same billing account for Google Maps Platform and Google Cloud usage, it said.

Under the new pricing, Google is reducing the pay-as-you-go rates while also increasing the number of monthly requests available in each tier.

For example, Geocoding API is currently priced at $5.00 per 1,000 requests for the initial 100,000 monthly requests on Google Maps Platform. However, after August 1, Geocoding will be priced at $1.50 per 1,000 requests for the initial 5,000,000 monthly requests for India-based customers.

Developers building for ONDC will be able to access additional discounts on certain APIs through participating Google Maps Platform partners, it said. The discounted pricing will be available for small businesses across all four roles in the ONDC network, including seller, buyer, technology service provider, and gateway.

Businesses can sign up for ONDC's discounted pricing for one year, starting August 1, 2024 and it will be valid for three years, until April 1, 2027, Google noted in a FAQ page.

Also Read: Google, MeitY Startup Hub to train 10,000 Indian startups in artificial intelligence

At the developer event, Google also unveiled a series of tools, programmes and partnerships to help developers build AI solutions and products for India and the world.

This includes the release of Gemma 2 open source AI model and a 2 million token context window on Gemini 1.5 Pro model to Indian developers.

Google introduced IndicGenBench, a multilingual benchmark designed specifically for Indian languages. It can be used to evaluate language generation capabilities across diverse user-facing tasks in 29 Indian languages spanning 13 writing scripts and four language families. This includes Hindi, Kannada, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Marathi.

The firm is also open-sourcing a new technology called CALM (Composition of Language Models) that allows developers to combine their specialised language models with Gemma models.

Apart from this, Google stated plans to launch a Agricultural Landscape Understanding (ALU) Research API in limited preview, with a goal to make agricultural practices more data-driven and efficient.

It will leverage AI and remote sensing to map individual farm fields across India, potentially offering landscape insights at the farm field level rather than at the current aggregate level. This can be used to address various challenges faced by farmers, such as accessing subsidies and capital to improve yields and market access.