Private companies lap up Esri's GIS software for multiple uses

Esri, a leading Geographic Information System (GIS) company globally, is leveraging on the second phase of its adoption in the country which includes the private sector as well as new swathes of industries spanning telecom, insurance, airports, steel and cement manufacturers, power companies, and logistics companies.  

For the government, Esri provides digital location software which captures, stores, manipulates, analyzes, and manages all types of geographical data. Government departments have used it to build village land records, track rural roads, and manage water resources. 

But now private companies, including those in the telecom sector such as Reliance Jio and Airtel, are clients. They are using GIS software to help plan the crucial roll out of the 5G network. GIS helps them track each telecom tower, project congestion levels based on the usage patterns of consumers, and even work out how many consumers have a 5G mobile phone handset.

“We are seeing the second phase of GIS adoption in India and the market is growing,” said Esri India managing director Agendra Kumar who has a 51 per cent stake in the Indian venture. “We have over 5,000 organisations who use our software and as many as 600,000 people.”  

Kumar says Esri is increasingly moving onto the cloud which has impelled it to  tie up with data centres such as Amazon and offer  managed services.

Currently, about 30 per cent of Esri’s business comes from the private sector (five years ago it was 25 per cent); the rest is from the government. Kumar expects the ratio to tilt even more  towards private enterprises. As long as there is no third party data, he says, Esri will continue to dominate the GIS software market.

The geospatial market (which is a broader space of the digital locational services business) is large. It includes satellite services, drones, navigation systems, survey companies, map companies, hardware players, solutions providers, and GIS software technology platforms such as Esri.

 With the government liberalizing the geospatial policy, research agency Geospatial World estimates that the size of the industry will go up from around Rs 27,000 crore this calendar year to Rs 37,000 crore by 2025, both in India and exports.

New markets are opening up.  Kumar says that private insurance companies who are clients are using GIS technology to meet the stringent government requirement of closing claims and giving compensation due to losses.

Information from drones (if the crop damage is limited to a small area) and satellite data is integrated on Esri’s GIS technology to calculate the amount of crop damage and to settle claims.

In manufacturing, leading steel and cement plants are Esri’s clients. “These companies use GIS to track their raw materials coming from various mines and make delivery time projections so that they can plan their production schedule. They also track distribution of the finished product to the stockyards and finally to the distributors,” said Kumar.

Private airports are using the technology to build a ‘digital twin’ of their infrastructure so that they can simulate whether the airport infrastructure can take the passenger load (note the current chaos at Terminal 3 in Delhi) at any given time or the number of aircraft at different timelines, all of which helps them decide how to manage beforehand.

Esri is also working with power distribution companies who used to use GIS to reduce distribution losses. Now they are talking to Esri about how to use the software to integrate the solar and other renewable energy that come onto the grid with coal powered electricity in order to achieve efficient distribution.

Some companies are also looking at using the technology to project demand from electric vehicle charging stations so that when demand hits a peak in the evenings, the grid knows what to expect.

Expanding Reach

• Esri’s GIS software has a client base of 5,000 organisations & 600,000 subscribers 
• Private telcos, which are using it to roll out networks and maintain them, are one of its largest markets  
• Private insurers are using it to close claims for crop insurance 
• Airports are using GIS to build a ‘digital twin’ 
• Manufacturers from cement to steel are using it for tracking raw material and finished goods   
• Power firms using it to increase grid efficiencies