MapmyIndia Invites Perplexity AI for Partnership

Mappls MapmyIndia has reached out to Perplexity AI for a potential partnership, days after Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said “maps are the hardest.” The company publicly highlighted its house-level mapping of India and positioned itself as a ready partner for AI-driven products.

In its statement, MapmyIndia said it has been building detailed digital maps of India since 1995, covering both urban and rural regions with house-number accuracy. It said this scale and precision have been achieved through decades of on-ground data collection and continuous updates—something even global mapping giants have struggled to replicate.

The company framed maps not just as datasets but as infrastructure critical to logistics, governance, commerce and consumer applications at scale.

After partnering with Zoho earlier, MapmyIndia said it is open to collaborate with Perplexity AI next, positioning its mapping stack as an Indian alternative that can integrate into AI-based search, assistants and enterprise tools.

The company said its Mappls and MapmyIndia apps are used by over 35 million people and are expanding beyond India. It described its technology as a “swadeshi” digital foundation built for India and ready for global markets.

With the growing push around Zoho’s suite of products, including Arattai, often hailed as India’s answer to WhatsApp, Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu praised Mappls app, calling it the result of “decades of R&D, much longer than Google Maps.”

Read: ‘Google Hid Us for 10 Years,’ MapMyIndia Fights Back with Swadeshi Mappls

MapmyIndia prioritises building a sovereign tech layer that isn’t dependent on Silicon Valley’s control of infrastructure. “We have nothing against foreign companies. But the playing field was never level. For 10 years, we were hidden from users. Handset makers were arm-twisted to preload only Google Maps,” Rakesh Verma, the company’s founder and managing director, told AIM.

“Google Maps has conquered India the way the East India Company [once] did,” he revealed. “If they had done it through better products and fair competition, [it would’ve been] fine. But they hid us for 10 years.”