MapMyIndia sends legal notice to Ola for ‘copying’ data to build Ola Maps: Report

MapMyIndia has alleged that Ola Electric has “copied” its data to build OLA Maps and sent a legal notice to the company, according to a media report on Monday (July 29).

The legal notice to Ola Electric has been sent by CE Info Systems Ltd, the parent company of MapMyIndia, a report on Forbes India said.

The news comes on a day when Ola Electric announced its upcoming initial public offering (IPO).

As per the report, Ola has ‘copied’ data to build Ola Maps by caching and saving MapMyIndia’s data, and co-mingling and reverse engineering the licensed product, which was signed in 2021.

“You have duplicated our client’s API (application programming interface) and SDKs (software development kits) from proprietary sources belonging to our client to build OLA Maps. It is firmly stated that our client’s exclusive data has been copied/derived by you to further your illegal motive and for your unjust commercial gains,” claimed CE Info Systems, which has slapped a legal notice on Ola Electric, the report said.

“Your assertion that you have developed API and map data/Ola Maps solely through open map is factually incorrect and not tenable,” said in a legal document, according to the report.

Earlier this month, Ola Electric CEO Bhavish Aggarwal had urged Indian developers to exit Google Maps and promised one year free access to them to Ola Maps with “more than Rs 100 crore in free credits”.

“We’ve been using western apps to map India for too long and they don’t get our unique challenges: street names, urban changes, complex traffic, non-standard roads etc. Ola Maps tackles these with AI-powered India-specific algorithms, real-time data from millions of vehicles, leveraging and contributing massively to open source (5 million+ edits just last year!) (sic),” he wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on July 8.