Geospatial policy and India market growth catalysed IPO plans: MapmyIndia

IPO-bound MapmyIndia is firmly focused on the India market, where it has a bulk of the B2B and B2C market share for mapping services, a top executive said.

Chief executive and executive director Rohan Verma said that the decision to go in for an initial public offering was due to the overwhelming response to recent listings by startups as well as the policy push for geospatial solutions in the country.

In February, the government eased regulations governing the acquisition and application of geospatial data, allowing private firms to use high-precision satellite imagery — of one-metre and below. According to the policy, overseas firms such as Google Maps can also source such data from Indian companies’ local servers, though they cannot themselves own that data.

“Not only has the customer ecosystem started understanding the B2B and B2B2C internet-based business models, the government’s stamp on the geospatial policy earlier this year was also a huge catalyst,” Verma said.

MapmyIndia had over 500 customers on the SaaS, PaaS and MaaS platforms, including PhonePe (which also holds 36% share in the company), Flipkart, Yulu, HDFC Bank, Airtel, Hyundai, MG Motor, Avis, Safexpress Logistics and the Goods and Service Tax Network. It competes with the likes of ESRI, Trimble, TomTom, Here Technologies and Google Maps across segments.

According to a report by Frost & Sullivan, the total Indian addressable market for digital maps and location-based intelligence services will touch $7.74 billion in 2025, at a compounded annual growth rate of around 15.5% from 2019 onwards.

It will be the fourth profitable startup to make a public market debut this fiscal year after the likes of beauty marketplace Nykaa, travel broker ixigo and used car marketplace CarTrade.

In recent years, he said the addressable client base has expanded because of increased awareness about geospatial solutions and use cases.

In the previous fiscal year, the company’s order bookings grew 3.3x over FY19, following higher demand for its solutions across the automotive sector, according to its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP). The company primarily earns revenue from its licensed software mapping solutions.

The 26-year-old company filed its DRHP with the Securities and Exchanges Board of India (Sebi) in late August. Its IPO will see an offer-for-sale of up to 7,547,959 equity shares at a face value of Rs 2 each, amounting to around 19% of the post-offer paid-up equity share capital. Stakeholders like Walmart-backed fintech firm PhonePe, chip maker Qualcomm and Japanese map publisher Zenrin will be offloading some stakes through the IPO, according to the DRHP.

“While our solutions are geography agnostic, we also have a global solution and many of our solutions have gone multinational as our clients went global; India definitely is the core focus. We also want to tap the international opportunity, but not at the cost of India…,” said Verma. Hostingsignal