Indian Geospatial Sector Key Trends and Market Drivers

By Jeffy Jacob and Sachin Awana

Over the last three years, India’s geospatial market has registered a significant growth – hitting 28 thousand crores INR in 2022, from 23 thousand crores INR in 2019.

The sector has the potential to contribute substantially in generating employment, creating knowledge, and escalating socio-economic progress of the nation.

Furthermore, the prospect of integrating geospatial technologies with emerging technologies such as AI, ML, and IoT gives an outlook for the industry that is promising, to say the least.

With the Government of India utilizing several applications of geospatial technologies in its various missions ranging from departmental to national projects, the confidence in the Indian geospatial market soars high.

As per the Indian Geospatial Outlook Report 2022, produced by Geospatial World, here are the key trends and market drivers that are likely to be witnessed in India:

Key Trends

Digital Infrastructure

Digital Infrastructure is forecasted to be the most impactful technology trend in the next five years. The government’s ventures into digital infrastructure such as Smart City, Smart Agriculture, and Smart Health provide a testimony to the sweeping reach of this technology.

However, deploying digital technologies across multiple government sectors brings forth challenges. To curb that, several national mission mode programs and projects are being initiated by the government. One of which, the PM Gati Shakti program, looks to bring 16 ministries together via a digital platform.

This project aims at ensuring seamless last-mile connectivity for public, goods and services, and reducing travel time for people.

“While India has been at the forefront of geospatial applica- tions and services globally, the geospatial industry is finally bullish about the possibilities that exist today with respect to geospatial technology and its adoption across national programs and initiatives,” the report states.

Ubiquitous Connectivity

5G will empower everything from smartphones to autonomous vehicles and smart cities with the ability to move more data quickly than previous generations of wireless tech.

For this technology to work flawlessly, well organised, extensive networks are needed and 5G brings a set of challenges that require detailed and dynamic geospatial data and information to solve.

This will help in bringing innovation to parts with resource scarcity and it allows organizations to deliver additional business value via connected products and services that rely on the constant movement of data.

“There is a noticeable interest seen in ubiquitous connectivity (5G) by the industry leaders and is forecasted to be the second most impactful technology trend in India’s Geospatial market,” the report tells.

GIS companies are providing both unique and existing location data to telecom companies to implement 5G in a logical step. Other than physical details of the infrastructure of cities and landscape, geospatial analysis can provide insights about various other metrics such as weather and vegetation. This leads to a deeper understanding of factors that could impede signal reliability thereby leading to a much more stable 5G network.

AI, ML and Deep Learning

Emerging technologies such as AI, ML and their integration with business intelligence platform and engineering workflows will play a vital role in bringing an era of connected technology, changing the way people communicate and operate.

Worldwide adoption of AI and ML will lead to more efficiency in workflows along with accurate analysis, and improved decision-making.

Moreover, the interoperability of the new technologies will widen the net for embedding geospatial technologies and elevating its use cases.

“With the kind of data available to us, and now that the new policy is also available, I think IoT and ML are going to play a major role in creating more applications that will use these data and help in wholly transforming the geospatial sector,” says Raghu Boyapally, Founder & CEO, Marvel Geospatial Solutions.

Aerial Mapping

The mechanism for mapping the country is an urgent need and the government envisioned creating large-scale maps for the entire country with the help of the National Mapping Agencies available to the end users by way of Open Series Maps.

Drones are a cost effective method in gathering data for these series of maps. The use of drones, especially in geospatial surveys, has become predominant in the agriculture sector to monitor crop health, yield and land use patterns. Drones are also being used in mining, defence, construction, land development and planning.

Market Drivers

New Collaboration Agreements

One of the significant factors that will drive the market for Indian geospatial industry are the new collaboration agreements.

“After the Guidelines for Geospatial Data was released, the Indian geospatial ecosystem has seen significant partnerships and collaborations which has enhanced technology integration in the country,” the report says.

Multiple laws enacted by the government to give a freer hand to the private sector has cultivated inter-disciplinary collaborations. This has upgraded the standard of geospatial technologies in the country.

In a short span of few years, definitive collaborations such as Google, Tech Mahindra, and Genesys International, and Synspective and NeoGeo have been witnessed.

Domain Accelerator & Incubation Networks

The Industry players will see a growth in incubation networks and domain accelerator with focus on research and academia. Venture Capitalists and Private Equity players have taken a keen Interest in supporting space and geospatial startups.

“The geospatial industry is partnering with research institutions to fund innovations, provide technical assistance, and mentor emerging start-ups,” the report adds.

The commotion of start-ups in various fields, ranging from space to agriculture innovation, has been spurred thanks to the national geospatial policy.

For instance, the notable partnership between T-Hub, which leads India’s innovation ecosystem, and Hexagon, one of the global leaders in digital reality solutions, to build a Geospatial Experience Centre is aimed at country’s growing start up ecosystem.

Enhanced Workflow Integration

Improving the workflow integration in sectors such as AEC, Disaster, and Energy management etc. is anticipated to be the third most important market driver. Given the ability of interoperability of geospatial technologies with emerging as well as established technologies, many different operations are carried through an amalgamation of these.

“The government mandates and pushes the integration of geospatial technology as part of workflow operations. It is forecasted to enhance and drive the geospatial market growth in the country,” the report says.

For instance the Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways has mandated the use of LiDAR,

Drones and UAV’s in national highway project.

With emerging technologies push for a change, the workflow in geospatial technologies will also undergo reformation.

Evolving Legislative Environment

With the enactment of the National Geospatial Policy in 2022, the outlook of entire geospatial industry in India has become highly confident and optimistic. "The policy seeks to strengthen the geospatial sector to support national development, economic prosperity and a thriving information economy,” according to the policy document.

The new guidelines have deregulated India’s geospatial sector by liberalizing crucial information such as data acquisition, production, and access. The policy also establishes an overarching framework of data movement for holistic development of the geospatial industry.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has also launched the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) project for sharing geospatial information among various government agencies and other stakeholders. This project will help improve the accuracy of geospatial data and also provide a basis for decision-making in various domains.

The new geospatial policy’s ambition is to make India a world leader in global geospatial space with best-in-class innovative ecosystem and conducive mechanisms for fostering collaborations.

Jeffy Jacob

Sub Editor, Geospatial World Jeffy@geospatialmedia.net

Sachin Awana

Sub Editor, Geospatial World Sachin@geospatialmedia.net

CONTINUOUSLY OPERATING REFERENCE STATIONS (CORS) NETWORK:

Pan India CORS Network is being established by Survey of India, to achieve centimetre level accuracy position in real time.

Total 1008 Continuously operating stations will be established in entire country, which will be capable of providing better than 3 cm accuracy in Real Time.

CORS Network in state of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Punjab, Karnataka and Maharashtra is operational and services are available on SoI service Portal.

Real-time and Precision positioning services by SoI’s CORS Network, are being offered on No charge basis for 3 months from 1st June, 2022 to all citizens in the state of U.P., Uttrakhand, Haryana, N.C.R., Maharashtra and Karnataka.

http://cors.surveyofindia.gov.in