TomTom working on mapping platform for emerging markets

Pune: Dutch geospatial firm TomTom is engaged on a brand new mapping platform that might assist it strengthen its presence in international locations in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, chief govt Harold Goddijn mentioned.

A big a part of the event is going on out of India, which has a few quarter of its whole worker base.

“Traditionally, the majority of the investments for digital maps went into Europe and North America. The demand goes up and the know-how to provide maps can be maturing quickly, so now we will construct higher merchandise for continents the place historically now we have much less of a presence, and that can open up a complete new bunch of enterprise alternatives for us,” he mentioned.

Goddijn, who is among the cofounders of the corporate, declined to share an actual timeline as to when the product would probably be launched.

India, with about 1,000 staff, is residence to a major a part of the know-how crew at TomTom.

Goddijn was in India for the launch of the corporate’s new workplace, among the many first to be designed for a post-pandemic world. Not like conventional workplaces, the main focus of the brand new workplace is creating area for groups to collaborate with staff not having devoted work desks.

“If our staff are proud of it and take to it, we could roll it out throughout our different workplaces globally,” mentioned Goddijn.

Whereas drones are anticipated to be a comparatively small a part of the long run demand, and never an space the place TomTom is aggressively specializing in, Goddijn expects the electrical autos section to be an vital demand driver.

“It’s an important section. It’s part of the automotive setting, however electrical autos want higher info as a result of you’ve got charging vary nervousness and wish to know the way far you may go earlier than you might want to cost the automobile,” he mentioned. “Carmakers are equipping older electrical automobile automobiles with refined mapping know-how to allow this performance and we see it as an vital extension of what we’re doing, from steering for navigation to security and automobile administration.”

Mapmaking, he mentioned, has advanced considerably in the previous few years, with the corporate now gaining access to real-time on-road information. This helps it replace highway indicators and different landmarks on a extra common foundation, rising the accuracy of the product.

“Increasingly of the work has develop into automated and that has accelerated over the previous few years,” he mentioned.

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