Startup Fridays Season 2 Ep. 7: My hope is, entrepreneurs even crazier than us will rise and build for India — Rohan Verma

Forbes India - The Startup Fridays Podcast

Our guest today is Rohan Verma, CEO and executive director at MapmyIndia, a Mumbai-listed company in the areas of digital mapping, geospatial technologies and automotive mobility technologies. In this episode, Rohan talks about why he is optimistic that a serious tech product ecosystem will emerge in India over the next five years. He also hopes that entrepreneurs with foresight will rise and make India self-reliant for the crucial underlying infrastructure as well.

Notes:

(00:47) Introduction to The Startup Fridays conversation

(01:12) Our guest today — Rohan Verma, CEO and ED, MapmyIndia

(02:32) On how MapmyIndia was started

(04:31) Early applications and use cases

(07:10) A couple of important milestones

(09:02) Challenges in the early years of the company

(11:36) Flagship products and platform of MapmyIndia today

(14:01) The direction in which the company is growing

(15:54) More on the tech — what’s at the heart of MapmyIndia

(18:17) Emerging use cases for location technologies

(20:48) MapmyIndia for consumers

(23:09) The toughest obstacles in building a tech product company in India

(25:47) No centre in Silicon Valley — passionate about India

(27:38) Biggest lessons

(29:39) How being a public company’s CEO is different

(31:36) What did Rohan have to unlearn

(33:41) What should India do to build up its tech products ecosystem

(37:25) Liberalisation of geospatial data policies in India — significance

(41:38) What worries Rohan about India’s tech scene

(44:39) Examples of crucial underlying building blocks in the tech industry that India must build its own

(46:58) Rapid fire questions

More about Rohan and MapmyIndia

https://www.mapmyindia.com/

Theme music courtesy Twisterium

https://shrtm.nu/Pxh9