MapMyIndia, Indian firm that powers Apple Maps and Alexa, heads for IPO

MapmyIndia, a digital mapping company whose data powers Apple Inc.’s Maps and Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa in India, will file initial public offering documents as soon as Monday, according to people familiar with its plans.

The firm, backed by Qualcomm Inc. and Walmart Inc.-owned payments startup PhonePe, is targeting an IPO size around $175 million at a valuation of about $825 million, one of the people said. The offering will be comprised entirely of secondary shares, the people said, declining to be named as the information is private. 

The Okhla, Delhi-headquartered company sells its technology and geospatial information to a broad range of global brands, including Uber Technologies Inc., Mercedes-Benz, McDonald’s Corp. and e-commerce rivals Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart.

MapmyIndia, formally named CE Info Systems Pvt, is profitable unlike many of the current crop of high-profile but loss-making startups such as Zomato Ltd. that is fueling a tech IPO boom in India. The market for geospatial data and services in the country is one of the fastest-growing in the world, estimated by the government to be worth about $14 billion by 2030.

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India relaxed centuries-old stringent controls over mapping and other geographic data earlier this year, making sweeping changes in hopes of spurring startup innovation. That provided a boost for companies like MapmyIndia, which enjoy a privileged position relative to international competitors like Alphabet Inc.’s Google Maps. Foreign mapping players are barred from using high-precision satellite imagery, collecting street-view data and conducting ground surveys to build up their maps, and are required to acquire such data from domestic providers.

MapmyIndia was founded by Rakesh Verma and Rashmi Verma, the husband-and-wife duo who continue to run the company and will remain promoters at the time of the IPO, one of the people aware of the documentation said. The company, also backed by Japanese mapmaker Zenrin Co., began operations in the early 1990s in what is considered one of the most challenging countries for mapping. 

Among its early clients was Coca-Cola Co., which tapped into the firm’s topography services to support logistics and distribution. Last year, MapmyIndia devised a Covid-19 dashboard with real-time mapping of containment zones, testing centers and hospitals across the country, making it available to hundreds of millions of users.