Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications company Aeris and MapmyIndia have entered into a partnership for offering geospatial Internet of Things (IoT) solutions in India. Aeris offers IoT solutions like fleet telematics, connected vehicles, monitoring and control, healthcare and other M2M IoT solutions to enterprises. MapmyIndia on the other hand, offers digital maps, GPS navigation, tracking, location based apps and geographic informations system (GIS) solutions. As such, the companies will likely focus on offering connected mapping and tracking solutions for transportation businesses. Note that MapmyIndia has been working on connected vehicles for a while now, both for businesses as well as end customers. The company had initially partnered with Eicher to make connected school buses back in 2015. Subsequently, it tied up with Avis Car Rental to implement its Integrated Dispatch Solution in all of Avis’ cars and tied up with Ola for mapping data the same year. Last year, the company launched a plug and play device called DriveMate for end consumers, that would provide location, ignition and status reports, alerts of the vehicle via smartphones. These partnerships are a part of a trend we are going to see as connected devices start becoming a norm, leading to companies from different verticals joining hands to offer connected and integrated solutions. For example, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) recently signed a global partnership agreement in the industrial IoT space with General Electric (GE), to offer industrial IoT solutions through Jio’s network, while Aircel partnered with Tech Mahindra to roll out IoT services, and Reliance…
