MapmyIndia, which provides GPS navigation solutions and location apps for consumers and enterprise, today announced the launch of India’s first Freemium Glocal navigation app – NaviMaps. This ‘Freemium’ maps & navigation application is available for Android devices (app.lk/navimaps). The iOS and Windows versions will be launched soon. With this MapmyIndia has become the first Indian company to offer Freemium maps and navigation in the country.
The app also features, for the first time in India, house-level navigation, regional language voice guidance. The package includes automatic traffic based re-routing and real time journey updates on Facebook. Even though the application is loaded with features, the users can look forward to a superfast and responsive experience with MapmyIndia NaviMaps.
“MapmyIndia NaviMaps app is in sync with our endeavor to provide best-in-class navigation experience to our users. This app is a freemium app where the user has to pay a small fee to enjoy full voice guidance features, which is more than compensated by the significant savings made by not having to pay any data charges, as the app is offline. This however is not the case with many other free navigation apps on offer where the user ends up paying heavy internet charges,” says Rakesh Verma, Managing Director, MapmyIndia
MapmyIndia Navi Maps – a unique ‘Glocal’ initiative
The key objective is to provide the best of international and localized content. With Navi Maps, MapmyIndia has expanded its foot-print into Southeast Asia, by offering maps of Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. To provide rich local content, the app is equipped with house level addresses and voice guidance in regional Indian languages. The MapmyIndia NaviMaps is the only navigation app in India to offer last mile connectivity in the users preferred language.
Powerful Social Media integration, Real time traffic based route guidance and personalization
The MapmyIndia NaviMaps package offers powerful and personalized navigation for Android users. The app allows users to share location and routes via Facebook with the feature of real-time journey progress sharing on Facebook to update friends on road-trips. With this feature your journey progress will be updated on the Facebook timeline. The post will be refreshed periodically. Special care has been taken to avoid spamming the timeline as the same post gets refreshed with progress in journey.
Users can also save a frequently traveled route on the NaviMaps app, the live traffic dashboard will show expected travel times on those routes. The dynamic traffic re-routing automatically switches the user to an alternate route in case of a traffic jam. The app’s regional language voice guidance feature further adds to the personalization capability.
Freemium Maps & Navigation – The business model of the future
Freemium app, as the name itself suggests, means a part of the app is free and for enhanced features there is the option for an ‘in-app’ purchase. The users can initially, during the free trial period of 3 days, enjoy the full featured app loaded with enhanced Pro-Guidance features like Voice Guidance, House level data, Experience India’s most accurate offline navigation at no cost. Pay only for the premium features. After this period they will continue to enjoy unlimited access to the offline maps with universal features. It is already very successful business model in the west. Users get the benefits of premium product without having to bear the cost of subsidizing (to make it free) by other means. The aim is to make the application viable on its own, without any cross subsidization.
Navigation uninterrupted! Works even when internet connectivity is poor/unavailable
There is no internet connection required therefore no hidden/recurring expenses are incurred once the application is downloaded on the phone. The maps are active even on offline mode, thus the app works well even if GPRS connectivity is poor/ unavailable, as it happens while travelling through highways or small towns.
MapmyIndia NaviMaps:
Free Maps App for lifetime Includes:
· Three (3) alternate routes to your destination and one pedestrian route
· Location, route sharing via Facebook, messages, email, Live Traffic with detailed MapmyIndia maps for whole of India with latest coverage.
· Single line predictive destination search and Multi-stop Routing with Full multi-touch map display support
· Two-finger swipe down on any page or menu to return to map view and Straightforward menus and fast workflow
· Three days free trial for full version pro-guidance app
In-App purchase to full-featured pro-guidance for lifetime for INR 599 includes:
· Maps for other countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri-Lanka
· Real time turn-by-turn voice guidance in 10 regional languages apart from English
· Auto re-route if you deviate from suggested route
· House Number Data , POI along the route, 3D buildings
In-app purchase of Map Updates for INR 299