Growing Global Business for Geospatial Services - The Experiences and Expectations of Indian Geo-Spatial Industry
- Paper number
IAC-06-B1.5.01
- Author
Mr. R.L.N. Murthy, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), India
- Coauthor
Dr. CVS. Prakash, Antrix Corporation, India
- Coauthor
Mr. K.R. Sridhara Murthi, Antrix Corporation, India
- Year
2006
- Abstract
Purpose:The paper discusses the growth of Geospatial Business globally and the experiences of Indian Geo-spatial industry. The capabilities demonstrated and the expectations for the future are also discussed. Methodology:Qualitative Marketing Research by Market Analysis Programmatic Content: Global Geospatial business comprising – Spatial and aerial Data supply, remote sensing and GIS software services in addition to customised solutions has been expanding, making continuous inroads into a number of existing and emerging markets. Areas that hold major growth potential include Disaster Management Information, Urban and rural development oriented information, Terrain Visualisation applications using stereo and High Resolution (HR) data in addition to increased mobile mapping and surveying. Combination of GIS, GPS and HR Remote Sensing data is expected to expand user oriented applications business. While data supply is one of the constituents of the business, more important drivers have been the value addition services offered by different agencies. While the spatial data from satellite images is being provided by a handful of companies, the service providers in the value addition have increased in number, all across the globe. Many an Indian companies have world class expertise and experience in such technical business, winning and completing international contracts to the acclaim of the users. The Indian Department of Space,DOS is the pioneer in Geospatial Information Technology and applications.The thrust of the endeavour has been in Strengthening partnership with industries to evolve an internationally competitive Indian Space industry through developing capability and capacity. More than 200 companies in India are working in GIS / Remote Sensing services engaging over 12,000 professionals with many small \& medium start ups joining every year. Detailed scrutiny, inspection and evaluation by a national committee to identify and recognise entrepreneurs in various Geospatial activities for various national level projects have been instrumental in not compromising the quality in the midst of quantity. The resource Sectors Covered by the Indian Private companies include- Cartography, Digitisation and integration using GIS, Soils and Land Use, Land and Water resources development, Geology and Agriculture etc. Increased number of US/European companies looking for Indian arm for joint ventures and for outsourcing the needs have propelled business prospects of the industry. Also, the dual pronged approach followed by ISRO - hand holding during development phase and competitive environment later has shown promising results. One consensus, across differing Market demand Forecasters is an upward trend in the demands and widening the usage patterns. The emerging areas as well as the challenges for the industry indicate a demand for reducing cost and increasing automation in extraction of terrain information and merging of various data sets. Similarly, the challenges of dealing with multi date, multi resolution and multi sensor data in mosaicing need to be addressed carefully. The revolution created by Google Earth can be seen by geospatial industry as an opportunity of unprecedented awareness and mass appeal pointing to the due need for user friendly and affordable innovations that industry has to create. The industry can get benefited from this latent demand in mass customers with optimum and affordable solutions. Conclusion: The developments in Geo-spatial business point to increased scope for Private entrepreneurs and Indian Space Agency’s efforts in working together to build a vibrant space industry should facilitate in exploiting the opportunities while coping with the challenges.
- Abstract document