This artiste's firm has given every 3 sq m on Earth a unique 3-word address

Chris Sheldrick's firm what3words enables people around the world to identify and share any precise location using just three words. In India, its service is available in eight languages

Chris Sheldrick trained as a classical musician at King’s College London and the Royal Academy of Music. One night, a serious sleepwalking accident left his left wrist damaged, ending his career as a performer. Determined to stay connected with music, he travelled the world for 10 years working in the music business, booking bands and managing production for events. Being constantly frustrated with suppliers not finding site entrances, and bands not finding their way from the hotel to their gigs, Sheldrick tried distributing addresses and GPS (global positioning system) coordinates for years but both failed him on numerous occasions. “We always had this problem that wherever we went, there was never an address that I could give people that actually pointed to the stage door for the concert. There was always like one address for the stadium, and it was never useful for gates that the musicians needed,” says Sheldrick. “I tried to get all London musicians to start using latitude and longitude. It was great in theory but terrible in practice. It's a very scientific system, but not designed for humans to really work with.”

To address the problem, Sheldrick teamed up with his friends Mohan Ganesalingam, a mathematician,  Jack Waley-Cohen, a linguist and Michael Dent and co-founded location technology company what3words in 2013. London-based what3words is enabling people around the world to identify and share any precise location using just three words. The three-word addresses are easier to remember than a postal address and can be shared more accurately than any other location reference system. It is also the first addressing system entirely optimised for voice, allowing for the easiest and most human-friendly possible input. For example, Sheldrick’s business card mentions  ///filled.count.soap which marks the exact entrance to what3words’ London headquarters. The other side of his business card has an address ///dancehall.flatbreads.retire, which takes one to a beach in Philipsburg, the capital of Dutch Caribbean island of Sint Maarten, where three-word addresses are solving the pizza delivery challenge. It means that every house on Sint Maarten, as well as every beach chair, now has a reliable and accurate address for pizza delivery.

The world in 57 trillion squares

What3words said that traditional street addressing is failing to meet the demands of today’s on-the-go services such as food delivery, taxi-hailing and e-commerce. This also hinders access to healthcare and financial services. It said globally, 70 per cent of addresses will not take a person to the front door. Also, inaccurate addressing is very costly to businesses. 

What3words takes the user to a very specific location as it has divided the world into 57 trillion 3m x 3m squares, each with a unique three-word address. These squares correspond to the GPS coordinates. It is a geo-code system for the communication of locations with a resolution of three meters. The firm uses an algorithm to convert long and complex GPS coordinates into simple and memorable words. It intelligently assigns words to each location in such a way that similar-sounding addresses are placed as far from each other as possible to avoid confusion.

The what3words app is available for Apple's mobile operating system iOS and Google's Android platform, and the online map. The service is available in 40 different languages and the company has addressed the entire world in each language. Every one of the 57 trillion squares has localized translations. 

Betting big on India

What3words has been backed by investors such as tech giant Intel, Japanese electronics firm Sony and German luxury carmaker Daimler. Sheldrick said the company is now betting big on the opportunity it is seeing in India and strengthening its presence in the country. It has 8 Indian languages active--Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Urdu, Kannada and Malayalam. Hindi was the first South Asian language the firm worked on, and it learned a huge amount about India and its languages when coordinating that project. It is now looking forward to finalising  Punjabi, Gujarati and Nepali and Odia (Oriya) products in the coming months and years. Now 8 out of 40 (20 per cent) of its available languages are South Asian. 

“We are focusing on India because it is a huge country, over a billion people and there ( are an increasing) number of smartphone users,” says Sheldrick, CEO of what3words.  “The on-demand economy is kind of exploding and yet you've got people typing (long addresses) into the websites. We are very excited about the potential for India.”

In an effort to tap the India market, What3words has partnered with automobile manufacturer Tata, vehicle rental platform Drivezy and is also working with luxury-carmaker Mercedes-Benz. Another industry the firm is focusing on in the country is working with emergency service providers such as VMEDO and StanPlus. The firm said the use-case for the benefits of its technology in India is clear; a country with a high tech adoption rate and a growing market where the existing infrastructure for addresses is poor. “We want to (now) get started with e-commerce, logistics, food delivery, and ride-hailing,” says Sheldrick.

Globally, over 1,000 businesses, government agencies and NGOs across 170 countries are using 3-word addresses in sectors including automotive, e-commerce, logistics, mobility, travel, post and emergency services. Mercedes-Benz recently launched the world’s first car with built-in what3words voice navigation. Domino’s Pizza is delivering food faster to 3-word addresses around the world and travellers are also navigating with ease to find addresses provided by rental platform Airbnb. The United Nations has also adopted the technology for disaster response and relief, in addition to the Philippine Red Cross.