Making maps talk sense

Mapunity uses technology to track, outline and display evolving trends around social issues.

Take a person who dreams of being a physicist but goes on to becoming an astronomer at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), discovers a star, then takes to studying clouds and snow in the Antarctic as a climatologist. Meet Ashwin Mahesh who is back in India, has discovered a minor star, given up climatology and is deeply involved with public affairs and, hold your breath, is developing social technology. He is currently also visiting faculty at IIM Bangalore’s Centre for Public Affairs.

While NGOs may be better placed to understand and address issues like epidemics, development of handicraft centres, communal riots and conservation of heritage sites, Mahesh’s company, Mapunity (http://www.mapunity.org/) has begun developing technology that tracks, outlines and displays evolving trends around these issues. The central idea? To provide a spatial understanding of data like the spread of organic farms, wildlife proliferation and locations where T20 is played. The Mapunity platform is free — so anyone who wishes to plot data on a map can begin to use it whenever they wish. For Mahesh, nothing is more important than spatial visualisation. “But,” says the founder of Mapunity, “Our company doesn’t build products. We build solutions to social problems.”

As an example, Mapunity has partnered with Airtel for the Bangalore Traffic Information System (BTIS — see http://www.btis.in/), which collates data from a variety of sources to display a real-time picture of traffic conditions in the city. Mapunity has deployed GPS devices in 800 public transport buses to understand traffic movement and identify congested areas along with live camera feeds from major traffic junctions, BHEL’s intelligent signalling data, teledensity numbers from Airtel’s cellphone towers and places them on a map of Bangalore. Result: A public platform where you can locate buses and bus routes, get directions, figure out which routes to avoid and even get real-time traffic information on your mobile phone.

BITS solves the problem of centralised traffic monitoring and control. Today the system has been deployed in Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi. Mahesh’s vision behind such technology-enabled projects is lofty: “We want to use our expertise for the social and developmental sectors.” The only metric that Mahesh keeps in mind when launching his initiatives: The problem must affect at least 50 million people or more so that a good solution has a large impact.

The sharpness of Mahesh’s thinking cannot be lost. It is evident that having set up the system, there cannot be any competitor in the space. Why would anyone require two traffic monitoring systems? Deepak Malhotra, executive director, Airtel, South, comments “Mahesh’s strength is in identifying the opportunity and ensuring that everyone comes out a winner.” Mahesh has the patience it takes to come out a winner. He has been with the eGovernments Foundation, a not-for-profit trust established by the now Unique Identification Authority of India (UID) Chief, Nandan Nilekani, with the goal of creating an eGovernance system that could serve citizens better.

Mapunity has other services like Vaccidate, a platform for promoting public health. The free online and mobile-based service reminds parents about vaccination schedules for their children. The demographic data Mapunity is building could alone support a business plan.

Mapping is just one of facets of addressing social problems. Mapunity is developing a platform where Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) need access to vast amounts of data. Standard IT platform have deployment costs outside of typical MFI budgets. But the Mapunity solution, modelled after Software as a Service (SaaS) is accessible to just about anyone.

“Mahesh is talking,” says Mukundan Regunathan, CEO of Pepper Square, an interactive solutions company that has worked on a project which keeps parents informed about bus routes and school bus timings. “Google is struggling to infer trends based on keywords but that does not show any usable trends. The future is to get earthquake data, whether it is the right time to fish, travel advisory based on geo trends, reducing medicine prices through real-time trending data.”