[Please note that the word 'Sat Nav' used in this post is a reference to Satellite Navigation / Personal Navigation Device (PND)]
While there’s no first hand data available for India, there’s a survey result by US Automobile Association (AA) members. The result throws shocking insights w.r.t. the behavioral aspects of the consumers in that region. When these behavioral patterns are correlated with that of Indian consumers considering the geographical challenges in India, it reveals some very very interesting facts.
The survey was conducted with 7,380 drivers in Nov 2008 which revealed some of the following facts:
1. Fear – Approx. 75% of respondent who have Sat Nav still carry a Road Atlas.
Isn’t it interesting? This is one of the highly unexpected outcome. It clearly outlines the fear and distrust that majority of the drivers share with PNDs; that there is a possibility to get mislead by these devices.
Why this is important because in US the navigation and exit signs are very well marked on road and the addressing system is extremely systematic compared to that of Indian scenario, where even most local residents may look confused in guiding you to your destined location (forget about the navigation device).
Sign suggesting drivers to not follow Sat Nav system
We all know for one how badly does India suffer with the navigation planning where road names are not marked on the roads at all and the notion of exit signs doesn’t exist (accept at rare places). Turn restrictions are not perfectly mapped till date by the data providers, index of landmark visibility doesn’t exist, the visibility most of the times is not guaranteed.
With such challenges in place, the problem is a very tough problem to solve in India. Therefore, the promise of Sat Nav(s) or that of the providers to take you to your destination without getting lost is an absolute fallacy.
PND users have themselves reported some of the following problems:
- It takes minimum 15 minutes to bring the device to action. This involves making the satellite connection, feeding it with the relevant destination information etc.
- The device actually forces them to go in a particular direction while it may not be allowed at all.
In actual, they feel that it creates utter confusion, adds to the indecisiveness on-the-move and leads to higher chances of getting lost on the road.
2. Misguidance – 30% respondents confirmed that their Sat Nav has misguided them. 4% strongly agree that they are worried about getting misguided while only 47% disagree that they are worried.
More than the majority, about 53% confirm about being misguided by the PNDs in real-time in US conditions. In an Indian scenario it wouldn’t be a surprise if this percentage is more than 90%. It’d be interesting to collate the actual percentage of people who are being guided greatly by these devices.
Especially in India, where a common man struggles to understand the basic functionalities of the basic mobile handsets, using a Sat Nav is no kid’s play.
3. Distraction – 22% of respondents agree that their Sat Nav device distracts them when they are driving. 33% seemed confused about it.
Breaking of traffic rules, poor driving habits and lack of patience among drivers are not new things to any one who has driven on Indian roads.
Add to this the visual noise across cities due to unregulated/ corrupt adverting policies. The banners and hoardings are one of the major sources of distraction to these drivers.
Not to discount the fact of increasing mobile usage while driving among the drivers again.
Soon startups like CashUrDrive and Govt. initiatives allowing the advertising on moving vehicles will increase the reasons for distraction even more on the Indian roads.
With so much to distract for drivers, driving in India demands utmost focus (unlike western world). Isn’t it really important to understand if there’s any room for additional distraction (Sat Nav devices) for the Indian drivers at all?
4. Last-Mile navigation
Last-Mile problem is quite a visible problem to everyone of us in India and no structured efforts can solve it in even another couple of years to come. No data provider has the last-mile data availability today. While a few of them claim to initiate controlled efforts in this direction, it may still be a fallacy. Can a controlled effort really achieve door-to-door mapping across the country in a few years? I doubt.
As a consumer, we mostly invest heavily in a Sat Nav to ease the commute from one point to another point and not between two localities (which even a simple SMS solution can potentially solve or the auto drivers will solve; guaranteed), though the Sat Nav(s) promise point-to-point navigation without the Last-Mile data availability. Isn’t it interesting?
For the reasons above, I think the cost of device is not only in terms of hardware/software or the cost of updating map data but the additional helplessness and distraction it contributes to the Indian drivers On-move.
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However, there are few interesting insights about Sat Nav(s) that you might want to have a look at:
- 44% of the respondents use it very frequently.
- 49% are worried that it might get stolen – Sheer love with their device, isn’t it?
- 18-24 age group is most likely to have Sat Nav (43%)
- 25-34 age group is least likely to have Sat Nav (38%)
- Men are more likely to own a Sat Nav (47%) than woman (30%).
- And that the SatNav device is the most wanted gift item in the west.
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Note: I do not own a Sat Nav but do keep hearing the bad stories from it’s users, as well as the sad experiences from the car manufacturers. Though, personally I wanted to buy one for myself but couldn’t dare with majority feedback coming negative. It will be interesting to hear some good stories from the end users though. How many are here?
About the author: Piyush is co-founder of Routeguru.
hay rabba, yeh padhne se pahele hume upar utha lethe – hum bhi Yulop ke saath saath elope ho jate
I agree that PND will not take off in India but Piyush, I would like to offer a different interpretation to the survey. Also there is no parallel between the US and Indian culture and Mapping system, hence its futile to develop a correlation between the two. Moreover, Its totally unfair to blame the private data providers for poor data availability in India.
First the US scenario:
1. Fear: In US the road atlas have higher probability of having stale data as compared to PND and therefore higher chances of misleading the driver. People might want to keep it just as a backup and for reference when you are outside your car (in hotel room?)
2. Misguidance: Well, look at this, 70% users told PND never misguided them. Getting misguided once is your lifetime by a PND is not a big deal. Did these people stopped using PND after being misguided?
3. Distraction: That is something totally in your hand to control. Mute the device, ask your colleague to read it for you, what the heck, switch it off! Its a distraction only when you want it to be.
4. Last mile navigation: Its approximate but not off by a large distance. Generally within visiblity range.
Indian scenario is totally different. Thats because Indian road and locations are worst candidate for any kind of digital mapping.
1. Names are given only to major roads. Once you get into a colony, forget about road names. In US you will never find a road without a name. Mumbai is run by Building name, Indore is run by Colony Name. Half of India has Tehsils, other half has talukas. Same named villages in a district! Several cities falling in two different districts. These edge cases are endless for India and are only prohibitive. Places have large number of alternate spellings. Its screwed up big time.
2. No standard Address convention in India. Very Very bad. I mean seriously bad. There are 1000 ways to write one address in India whereas in US there is one and only one standard address for a location. They don’t know any building name, no colony, no apartment complex name, no “in front of XYZ”, nothing. Just the street name and house number and thats it. You will always see people giving you their standard address which makes things easier for everyone. All software engineers can appreciate it. It means in India you will have to pin point each and every address possible! and also store possible variations in naming. Whereas in US you can use even approximation. Mark 2points as 1000 Archer Rd AND 2000 Archer RD and now you can approximately tell location of any house number in between.
3. US govt has released all the map data in Public domain (because data is collected by tax payers money!). And in India to get data from Survey of India will be more difficult and restrictive than mapping it your self.
4. Landmarks in India are needed for navigation but not in US. And we have landmarks as things like handpump, neem ka ped, etc. its not ideal for digital systems.
I can go on endlessly why PND will not pickup in recent future but blame lies with the government, not with people trying to come up with a solution.
In any case, PND should be best medium to make use of digital data, even better than mapping websites. This is a domain which requires goverment to open up and players with big big pockets.
@Anshul, Wow! Your comment deserves to be a post in itself. Ashish are you reading?
Trying to respond to a part of your comments. Will respond to later half separately.
On correlation – Actually if not absolute, a relative correlation does exist in the behavior of the consumers across different geographies. Why the voice has been a killer app on mobile & e-mail on internet across the world? Because the consumers have shown similar behavioral pattern on the broader level.
On blaming – The article only tries to highlight the challenges from an Indian perspective i.e. how challenging the situation is today. There is absolutely no intention of blaming any private or public player (or anyone in the whole value chain). Please point out if you felt this in a particular statement.
On Fear – The landscape or POI(s) do not change as frequently as it happens in India, thus, the Road Atlas is actually the most reliable source for figuring out routes. (Doesn’t make sense if we call the data in atlas as stale).
Most players in India have the data built for enterprise needs. The consideration that are needed to use it for consumer based applications does not exist, therefore, unlike US, the chances of being mislead by the PND are much higher.
On Misguidance – Dependence on PNDs is very high in west due to less population density and their so-called “developed nation sense”, so they can’t stop using the PND (which may perhaps never be the case in India).
If in US like conditions 30% people confirm for being misguided, imagine what % would it be in India. Isn’t it fair to do some correlation here? Our whole country’s navigation system is so unplanned that the optimal route has got many many definitions to it. When your dependable guide doesn’t take you through your preferred route in real-time, people tend to get restless.
On Distraction – You’ll do when you’re aware of it. Have we stopped taking calls on the mobile yet?
On Last-Mile – Most visitors miss the keynote speech at a conference not because they started late from home or din’t know the route but because they spend majority time in the last-mile (let’s say 20 min within a km range), while they drove much more – all the way – within the similar time-frame. The problem is much bigger than you have perhaps understood.
2nd part response. On Indian Scenario. Actually all the reasons that you have cited are the reasons that I tried to correlate the behavioral patterns to convey that the situation is much bad in India and that PNDs are not something that Indians will utilize great help from.
1. By and large the need for directions is and will be huge in Tier 1 and 2 cities to begin with. Do people really need directions by paying from Tier 3 cities onwards is an unanswered question yet. In fact none of the expected delivery channels are helping any player make money even in Top tier cities itself yet. On this front, we all will see some disruption very soon.
2. You hit the bull’s eye. However as entrepreneurs we feel that bigger the problem is, better it is an opportunity to tap into. We at RouteGuru have conceptualized a few interesting ideas on solving these problems to certain extent greatly.
3. Survey of India doesn’t share any data in India. They din’t even have any mechanism to approve or endorse any private data as well. I heard recently that things are changing. Let’s hope something interesting happens.
Interesting to see your detailed thoughts on this issue. Are you by chance from GIS/ LBS domain?
@Piyush, One basic difference between two places is that we in India think in terms of landmarks (follow LM1 then take left, cross LM2 on left and then LM3 on right… and so on) whereas in US its in terms of roads (take I20 N for 20 miles then SW Haming RD for 30 miles etc.). Its the way we have been navigating since we are born and difficult to change.
I don’t get this idea of getting mislead by a PND and not by a Road atlas. I feel that a PND can easily be Road Atlas plus some extra features. You can definitely transfer all the data you have in print to a digital format and then add lot of icing on top of it in a PND. for example you buy a PND and update its data every month or fetch live traffic alerts which is not possible with a plain simple road atlas. I agree, in India a printed atlas will usually have better data as compared to its digital counterpart mainly due to the fact India is yet to be digitally mapped. But that doesn’t mean Road atlas will be good enough. Keeping all the atlases updated when there is no central govt agency to provide you with the info is very tough. The timeline involved in the whole process is so long that by the time data reaches you, it is already stale. Whereas in US most of the data collection is done electronically by the state agencies itself and this becomes source of data for every digital/non-digital map product for them.
Road data comes from Govt nodal agencies (not in India). Then companies like NavTaq and TeleAtlas improve that data and add value by transferring Yellow Pages data to maps (not adequate Yellow pages data for India) and interestingly here they don’t have to actually map the POI, just record its standard address and it can be easily geocoded. Then call each business every year to keep data fresh. Now on that data company like google will provide its users an option to edit the POI to a greater accuracy by moving the point within 200 feet range (not in India) to solve your last mile navigation problem. This roadmap to get usable digital data in India will be a long walk.
While I was there, I have made lots of 1000+ miles trip in US depending only on a car GPS or Google maps on my phone and am very happy with the outcome. Once I was pulled over by cops in Vegas for using Google Maps while driving (my fault, I should have stopped and looked directions). In another incident I entered into a road then recently converted to a Toll road because of stale data in my GPS and got my car photogrpahed as I didn’t have change to pay toll to the machine. But these things are all bearable and I don’t think using a Road Atlas would have avoided that.
Grading users in need of a PND based on Tier1, Tier2 location should be avoided. I will feel need of a Map/PND more while I am travelling the unknown parts. This means situations when I am feeling hungry and in a remote location and really don’t have somebody to ask for the nearest road side restaurant. In a big city you can even ask a autorikshaw guy without even stopping your car. In fact people paying visits often to Tier 1 cities will be more happy to buy the device as they have higher chances of getting lost as compared to local resident. And these people are from tier3 cities and other towns around the main Tier1 city.
Survey of India will not wake up, they are sitting on a data pool once collected by most competent people of the world but they are wasting it by not letting public freely use it. Things have a small hope of improving with NSDI coming up but that thing is just coming up since last so many years. No visible progress by govt on that front.
As you asked, I am a Civil Engineer by degree but instead practice web app designing. I keep a lots of interest in GIS and LBS and clearly see that as thing with bright future and great power for development of this country. It would be great to get in touch with like minded people. Ashish can help us both connect.
@Anshul, Agreed, that Landmark intelligent navigation is the way to go in India.
See PND creates a route in real-time which can be wrong as well, while on Atlas you figure out your route yourself and hence more reliable.
Your interest in this domain is amazing. Why don’t you share your contact details over piyush.gupta@routeguru.com. We’ll catch up over a call then.
@Piyush,
If you use Google/Yahoo! Maps for US then you can very well adjust the system suggested route just by dragging with mouse. Getting such functionality in PNDs is just a matter of design.
SatNav is for Indian consumers too, we have over 55000 people who have bought, and will vouch for the statement! While all the above concerns and suggestions are valid, the same is the situation anywhere in the world. A perfect city plan does not mean that navigation system will not misguide and a lousy planning / numbering sometimes actually makes the SatNav more indispensible. So bottom-line, every country in the world which has gone through this part of the adoption cycle has a lot of people thinking that their country is different and have reasons to believe why it will not work for them. They have been proved wrong, again and again and again and again, in every country around the world. So let us make the best of the situation, build better products, make adoption easier with better pricing and the market will grow exponentially in the next couple of years.
@Amit Prasad, “the same is the situation anywhere in the world.” this is a bold statement.
Amit, how many of these 55,000 are actually using them. Have you done any post sales survey. I will guarantee that not more than 2% is actually using it and that too sparingly. Rest all might have already given it to their kids to play football with.
SatNav/PND makes senses if I have Honda Accord or Civic, it is still an expensive proposition for someone with Santro or Bike (read it Mass/Middle Class Indians).
As a consumer I don’t want another piece of Electronics in my car — I carry my GPRS enabled phone and even without GPS, applications like Google Maps are able to figure out my location using cellID to fairly decent precision why can’t I keep getting adjusted routes on it?
The car travel in India is mostly bound to city limits and to major highways. Within the city I would trust my own memory and “local traffic condition knowledge” to get to a landmark and navigate based on the given direction from that point onwards. Would my kid be able to watch a movie on that SatNaV device while I travel to DND bridge from Gurgaon to visit someone in sector-14 Noida? I would need directions from DND onwards only. We need traffic information as well as fastest route at 10AM might not be fast enough at 2PM.
@Pankaj, You raise the badly needed point w.r.t. the cost of the device for middle class people.
Again your point of not owning another electronics gadget has weight. It’s an added distraction to you while driving while our habits don’t allow us to go away from our mobiles already.
Another interesting point I see is if PND has other features like video player, camera, FM etc then it has better value proposition to the consumer. I hope Amit and other providers read this comment here.
The below link will give you real customer feedback and insights into how do the PNDs by SatNav suffer.
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/gadgets-computers-software/33518-satnav-technologies-satguide-stay-away.html
Piyush,
this is a good post and an interesting topic. I currently live outside India and every time I use a GPS system I feel good about it’s convenience. At the same time, I feel pained with the fact that we can not implement this in my own country.
I do not want to repeat your points but here are few additional points I often felt during the long nights I had to suffer because of insomnia:
1. A dedicated Sat-Nav system per person is too much in India. There are not enough customers/cars to justify a business proposition of designing/manufacturing Sat-Nav systems. Usage of google map may help, but computer penetration in the country does not make me very hopeful and there are language barriers. Because most people in India own a mobile device at least, a navigation system working on mobile platform would be the best idea. The navigation should and must work in local languages. What do you guys think?
2. As you pointed out, addresses are not standardized, but for a person all addresses are not needed. A person can record all of the addresses he wants to mark (sort of a bookmark) as marked points in the map and can release some of his verifiable bookmarks as search-able by public.
3. Large communities/small cities may provide it’s own navigation map that can be accessed by software and in time all of these can be integrated. But why would they be doing it? The only way that could be done is to provide incentives to such communities/small cities in the form of web representation or helping the residents in finding friends/relatives in other communities.
4. Cars and car-owners are not exactly plenty in India. A navigational system that helps the user to navigate a web of public transport across the country through the mobile devices in local languages is possibly the holy grail. This is hard to achieve, but the benefit this may bring would outweigh any inconvenience of not having a standardized commuting system. My country contains many brilliant men, this site has good people discussing real problems. I urge you to apply original hammers to Indian nails, please do not try a US hammer on Indian nails.
To make all this work, a considerable portion of the country need to be evolved. Please note that, I am asking for evolution, not change. Evolution is a slow and painful process. I believe we are in the middle of it and although there is too much road to cross, much of the labor pain for the birth of this change are suffered by budding entrepreneurs like you. Hats off to you for such efforts and it is almost guaranteed that I would look at your journey with a mix of admiration, hesitation, confusion and frustration that is so often seen in Indian mass-psychology this century.
Dear Sid, I read much more about you through those lines.
1. I think number of cars are plenty but the customers … question mark!
2. Can’t agree more for the vernacular mobile based navigation.
3. In your second point I bet you talk from an IT user perspective. Indian mass still can’t do that.
4. While every problem is a tough problem to solve in India but that’s not what scares entrepreneurs. The difficult part is the lack of proper support system for us in India.
Thanks for the good words, however, a lot can be contributed by everyone like you, it just needs a structured thought.