Esri India partners with AGNIi (Invest India) to roll-out ‘GeoInnovation’

Empowering start-ups to build location Intelligence and facilitate wider adoption of geospatial technologies

by Suman Gupta

Mumbai– January 17, 2022: Esri India, country’s leading Geographic Information System (GIS) software and solutions provider, today announced GeoInnovation 2022 – an acceleration platform for startupreneurs, in partnership with AGNIi (Invest India). GeoInnovation program aims to help start-ups leverage Location Intelligence technology to build new businesses.

As per Geospatial “Artha” Report, India’s geospatial economy has the potential to grow to ₹63,100 crore by 2025 with a CAGR of 12.8%. GIS ecosystem in India has been growing steadily over the past few years. In addition, recent government policies like liberalization of geospatial data & new drone policy have laid the foundation of new Geo-enabled era, which is opening a huge opportunity for start-ups.

GeoInnovation 2022 would be divided into three phases

• Phase 1 – Applications Phase (ending on 25^th Jan 2022)

• Phase 2 – Technical guidance and business focused mentorship from Esri India, AGNIi and Funding companies (Feb – March 2022)

• Phase 3 – Business pitch (April 2022)

On the occasion, Agendra Kumar, Managing Director, Esri India, said, “Now is the right time to make bold transformations, aided by GIS technology & data, start-ups can aim to develop solutions that solve critical problems. With this partnership with AGNii, we want to make Location Intelligence Technology available to every start-up in India and pave way for its large-scale adoption. This program will enable brightest talents in start-up community of India to build specialized businesses leveraging the power of Mapping and Location Intelligence.”

The start-ups working across sectors including agriculture, healthcare, security, smart cities, water management, utilities, retail, BFSI, among others, would be able to benefit from this program.

Rahul Nayar – Head, AGNIi Mission, said, “AGNIi is excited to partner with Esri on the GeoInnovation 2022. This unique program will ensure that the Startups who are looking to create their own IP can add location intelligence and Geo-Enable their offering. The Government’s liberalization of geospatial data regulatory frameworks will fire up India’s innovation ecosystem – democratizing Indian innovators’ access to this crucial data asset. Via the GeoInnovation 2022 program, the AGNIi Mission will partner with Indian geospatial technology start-ups, enterprise, and researchers, to explore how our innovators can transform enterprise, economy, and governance.” 

With the 3rd largest Start-up ecosystem in world and more than 50 unicorns created in 2021 alone, India is certainly on its way to become the Start-up superpower of the world. Within this ecosystem, the technology led Start-ups have doubled to about 9000+ Start-ups and 1600 new tech Start-ups emerged in 2021.

Girish Shivani, Executive Director and Fund Manager, YourNest, said, “As we enter 2022, followed by a benchmark year for Indian start-ups, we are extremely excited to be part of GeoInnovation. The GIS market is driven by the adoption of cloud, AI/ML, AR & VR as well as other emerging technologies, and this is exactly what our focus has been at YourNest.”

Esri India actively works with start-ups to provide them with an early-stage technology support. DronaMaps, Saartha Labs, Genesis Ray and iSpatial Techno Solutions are some of the successful start-ups that participated in earlier GeoInnovation Programs.

About Esri India: Esri India Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Esri India) is an end-to-end Geographic Information Systems (GIS) solutions provider, enabling customers to think and plan geographically to make timely, well-informed, and mission-critical decisions. Esri ArcGIS System provides the backbone for the country’s mapping, spatial analysis, and all GIS requirements. A market leader in GIS Technologies, Esri India has successfully delivered cutting-edge GIS solutions to more than 5000 customers for applications in Land management, Water, Utilities, Infrastructure, Disaster Management, Telecommunications, Urban Development, Smart Cities, Transportation, Defence, and Natural resources. Established in 1996, Esri India is headquartered in Noida (Delhi-NCR), with multiple regional offices across India. The company has been recognized amongst India’s best companies to work for in 2021 by the Great Place to Work®️ Institute.

https://www.esri.in

About AGNIi: The AGNIi Mission is a flagship initiative under the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India and is one of the nine Missions under the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC). AGNIi is executed at Invest India, India’s National Investment Promotion and Facilitation Agency. The Mission catalyzes the commercialization of Indian emerging technologies by helping private, public, and non-profit sector organizations upgrade capability and competitiveness with Indian start-up, labs and public R&D innovation.

https://www.agnii.gov.in/

About Invest India: Invest India, set up in 2009, is a non-profit venture under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India.

As the national investment promotion and facilitation agency, Invest India focuses on sector-specific investor targeting and development of new partnerships to enable sustainable investments in India. In addition to a core team that focuses on sustainable investments, Invest India also partners with substantial investment promotion agencies and multilateral organisations. Invest India also actively works with several Indian states to build capacity as well as bring in global best practices in investment targeting, promotion and facilitation areas.

https://www.investindia.gov.in/