Why finding your way indoors is harder than mapping India’s roads

Indoor navigation is increasingly featured as the next layer of digital maps. But scaling this turns out to be much more complicated than creating outdoor navigation.

The reasons are structural. GPS does not work reliably indoors, indoor maps are privately owned rather than public domain, and each building requires special mapping and permitting, making achieving scale much more difficult.

Even companies that have cracked indoor location intelligence haven’t achieved full navigation. Peter Theil’s Palantir in the US, for example, has worked extensively with Wi-Fi signals, device metadata and sensor data to understand presence and movement inside buildings; often without requiring users to actively connect to a network. However, this capability was used for situational awareness, security and operational monitoring, not for turn-by-turn navigation.

Focus on controlled environments

A small but growing group of startups in India are now trying to make indoor navigation commercially viable for consumers and other businesses.

Indoor navigation is often embedded within a larger application or run on proprietary systems, such as Google Maps, Apple Maps, and MapmyIndia’s Mappls app. The primary purpose of most deployments is to track employees, assets, or inventory rather than helping visitors find their way.

Companies like Rannlab Technologies operate solely as B2B providers and offer indoor positioning systems accessed via corporate login for worker safety and asset tracking.

Others, like IWAYPLUS, create enterprise-level indoor maps for venues while also enabling consumer-facing navigation for visitors.

MapmyIndia’s recent acquisition of 6.06% stake in IWAYPLUS signals a push to expand the outdoor navigation stack indoors.

“GPS does not work indoors, indoor maps are not publicly available, and each building requires collaboration with owners and operators. So indoor navigation has not scaled as much as outdoor navigation,” said Pulkit Sapra, co-founder of IWAYPLUS. “For large mapping companies, partnering with specialist indoor navigation providers often makes more sense than building everything from scratch.”

Where adoption actually takes place

IWAYPLUS’ clients include major campuses AIIMS Jammu, Ashoka University and Brookfield Candor Techspaces.

Nidhin Chandra Mohan, co-founder of the company, said that beComap, which operates in India and the Middle East, works with companies such as HP, GMR Airports, Honeywell, Global Village Dubai and many large retail and healthcare centers.

A typical commercial deployment for a medium-sized facility (for example, a shopping mall, hospital, or corporate office) typically ranges from: ₹5 lakhs ₹25 lakhs for initial installation along with recurring maintenance charges, according to the founders mentioned here. Standard fee for major airports or warehouses, ₹2 to ₹8 per square meter for the entire ecosystem.

Rannlab, which tracks storage inventory and worker wages on an asset/device basis ₹3,000 to ₹10,000 per year per tracked object.

“Indoor positioning only works when the business case is clear,” said Umesh Kushwaha, CEO of the company. “For us, it’s asset tracking and worker safety, not general navigation.”

How does indoor navigation work?

Most indoor navigation systems rely on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals rather than GPS. When a user enters a building, their device can be detected in the same way Wi-Fi networks detect nearby devices, even if the user is not actively connected.

This is based on device identifiers such as MAC addresses, which are considered personally identifiable information. As a result, providers face stricter compliance and data protection requirements, especially in sensitive environments such as airports, hospitals and workplaces.

In practice, this enables precise, real-world use cases. At Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, for example, users can search for a specific outlet (say, the nearest McDonald’s) on Google Maps and be directed through the terminal. In large shopping malls, indoor navigation reduces confusion by directing users not only to a store but also to the correct door or entrance.

According to a report by Bain & Company, the global indoor navigation market is estimated to be worth approximately $20.77 to $37.54 billion with annual growth of 23.1% to 41.4%. The report states that “hyper-localization,” which means knowing exactly which aisle a customer is in, increases “on-shelf conversion” by up to 20%.

Sensitivity and confidentiality are important

Many experts argue that the real challenge is outdoor navigation rather than indoor navigation and is more about resolution and privacy.

“Outdoor GPS is designed for meters; indoor use cases need meters to several meters when dealing with much denser environments where signals are blocked by walls, people and materials. Add multi-storey buildings where vertical positioning becomes critical and the problem becomes even more challenging,” said Akash Bhatia, co-founder of Infinite Analytics, an AI-based consumer analytics company.

Indoor systems often rely on proprietary infrastructure (bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and sensors) that vary greatly from building to building, making standardization difficult.

“These systems can also raise privacy and compliance concerns, especially when location signals intersect with device identifiers. As a result, the economics often become as compelling as the technology itself,” Bhatia added. Infinite Analytics works with brands such as Coca-Cola, Hindustan Unilever Ltd, Skoda, Brown Forman and ITC.

Big Tech interests

Restrictions limiting the scale of indoor navigation have not deterred Big Tech; They reshaped how to approach the problem.

Companies like Google and Apple have built indoor mapping and positioning into their consumer platforms, while global retailers and logistics players including Amazon have funded and deployed indoor mapping, vision and localization systems in-house to optimize warehouses and fulfillment centers.

Venture capital has followed a similar path, backing specialist players such as Canada’s Peter Thiel foundation-backed Mappedin and Finland’s IndoorAtlas, which has partnered with Yahoo Japan.

In India, major telecom players are also entering this space. Reliance Jio is building location intelligence platforms like Jio Xplor that extend indoor tracking and navigation through telecom and IoT-led systems rather than standalone consumer apps.

Public infrastructure is also following suit, with deployments like AIIMS Delhi’s Bluetooth-based Disha app and MapmyIndia’s Delhi Metro integration.

As airports, hospitals, warehouses and campuses digitize operations, indoor mapping is being incorporated into larger location and analytics stacks. Adoption is now out of necessity.