There have been times when a courier service delivers a packet to the wrong address or when a road trip to Mukteshwar turns disastrous after you lose the way during the drive. Despite the popularity of digital maps for navigation, traditional addresses are still hard to find and prone to error. London-based what3words mapping startup wants to change traditional addresses with three simple words. For example, India Gate would be mapped as thrillers.widgets.income and New Delhi Railway Station would be required.sprayer.swoop. The idea of the what3words app came from CEO Chris Sheldrick, who co-founded the start-up alongside Jack Waley-Cohen, a mathematician. “So, it was six years ago, I was working as a live music organiser and wherever we traveled and put the address in, it never pointed to the actual place we wanted to go to. I tried to get everyone to stop using the addresses, and to use latitude and longitude, GPS coordinates. But I found that it's very hard to get people to accurately type in eight digits of latitude, eight digits of longitude,” Sheldrick told indianexpress.com over a phone call from London. Both Sheldrick and Cohen then developed a system which divides the world into 57 trillion 3-meter squares, and each square has one of the random-assigned, fixed codes. Sheldrick recalls how he and Cohen named each of the three words from the dictionary. The geocoding app, which is available in 36 languages, relies on algorithms and not a database. This makes what3words different from a postcode. “what3words is not going to replace Google Maps or Apple Maps. We don’t do navigation, we don’t do maps. We are the global address system,” Sheldrick explained. The success of the app can be measured by the fact that emergency services in the UK are using what3words to locate accurate incidents. In the UK, when you dial 999 and emergency services will accept three words at the location at the time of emergency. The start-up, founded in 2013, has since seen growth in many major markets, including the UK, Germany, and the US. The company’s system now covers the entire planet and the app has users in over 170 countries, Sheldrick said. The company is targeting India as its next big market. what3words is partnering with Tata Motors, which allows drivers to use the start-up’s novel three-words address system. Tata Motors is the first Indian automobile maker to use what3words addressing system in its cars. Internationally, Mercedes-Benz and Ford have incorporated what3words mapping system into their cars. The app is easy to use and can be downloaded for free from the Google Play Store or the App Store. Say you want to pick up your friend from Delhi’s Connaught Place, but there are multiple blocks and there is no simple way to explain your current location. By using what3words mapping system, you can spot a particular place entrance (say, Statesman House) and then tap on a virtual 3-meter square. This virtual square is tied to a three-word random phrase, like “pipe.sparkle.fishnet”. Think “pipe.sparkle.fishnet” as a code for Statesman House. In a country as complex as India, where finding exact locations or addresses, what3words addressing system makes a lot of sense. “India is an amazing and growing market. For us, this is about access to a billion people who so often struggle with addresses. The numbers of the roads are not known by the major mapping apps,” he said. It took the company a lot of time to plan its entry into India. In a diverse country with multiple languages, the challenge was to review the list of words, which were speakable or unspeakable. Sheldrick says the company has worked closely with Tata Motors on perfecting algorithms, which goes into the voice recognition engines. “We have taken an enormous amount of time to work with a team of 50 language consultants. This has been a really big project for us on the ground for a very long time,” he said. The what3words app is available in Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu and Marathi languages. The app can also operate offline and is also voice-activated. Sheldrick has big plans for the Indian market. Its close collaboration with Tata Motors is the first step to break into the world’s second-most populous country in the world. In fact, the company is open to collaborating with more automobile makers, commerce and delivery companies in the near future. One of the top agendas on the mind of Sheldrick is to partner with ride-hailing apps like Uber and Ola in India. “We are definitely breaking to bring what3words navigation system to Indian ride-hailing apps very soon,” he says. Cabify, the ride-hailing app which is present in Latin America, Spain and Portugal, already uses what3words mapping system. What3words is backed by a number of major companies, including German auto major Daimler which has a 10 per cent stake in the UK-based start-up. Intel, Deutsche Bahn and the Sony Investment Fund are also major investors in What3words.
