Startups like Zippr, wWhere using short codes to overcome obsolete addressing syPosted by Tanyasood on July 17th, 2015 16 Jul, 2015, 04.00AM IST- India As ecommerce and last-mile delivery services are making their way into the daily lives of urban India, the holes of the country's largely incomplete address system are starting to show. Any end customer can relate to the lamentable experience of trying to communicate directions to a government employee or a delivery boy armed with jewellery, a letter from a loved one, or the day's lunch. Seeing this, start-ups such as Zippr and wWhere have come up to "revolutionise" the location data industry, overwriting obsolete addressing systems with specific short codes that, if all goes according to plan, are to be shared with governments and delivery providers alike to facilitate hassle-free and efficient services. Zippr lets users create random four-digit, four-number codes that identify any dwelling, slums included. "We want to produce a standardised form of address, and then integrate services from both the private sector as well as the government to provide services for citizens," said Parikshith Reddy, marketing and partnerships director. The company, which has raised Rs 6 crore from the Indian Angel Network, has already run pilots with governments in Hyderabad and Vijayawada to roll out its coding system, and is in talks with governments in Delhi and Mumbai. Another startup, wWhere, allows users to share locations real-time, using GPS technology that is accurate down to a five-meter radius. "We wanted to eliminate postal addresses altogether using the mobile," said founder and CEO Ritam Bhatnagar, who raised angel funding in March. Such solutions are not new to India. MapmyIndia, founded in 1992, had already been assigning short codes to physical addresses for years, according to the company backed by Nexus Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. "It's like a vanity code that people can easily remember, which has its value, because you can't remember my GPS coordinates. But the fundamental problem of geocoding is still there," said Karthee Madasamy, vice president and managing director of Qualcomm Ventures, which has backed MapmyIndia. For the time being, third-party logistics players are experimenting with their own initiatives to address the geocoding issue, which has devised technology to be able to identify localities solely based on pin codes to improve routing. "There is no specific use case (of these codes) for us unless these codes start getting adopted by ecommerce companies and get passed on to us," said CTO Kapil Bharati. The Zippr app can be downloaded at the Google Play store & iTunes store . Like it? Share it!More by this author |