New Delhi: India’s geospatial economy is expected to cross Rs 63,000 crore by 2025 at a growth rate of 12.8 per cent and to provide employment to more than 10 lakh people mainly through Geospatial Start-Ups. This was stated by Union Minister for Science and Technology and Ministry of Earth Sciences Dr Jitendra Singh, while addressing the 2nd United Nations World Geospatial Information Congress-2022 (UN-WGIC-2022) held in Hyderabad recently.

The 5-day conference is being attended by over 2,000 delegates including 700 plus international delegates and participants from about 150 countries. Moreover, the National Mapping Agencies (NMAs) like the Survey of India, which has a glorious history of 255 years, senior officers, non-governmental organizations, academia, and industry, user, and private sector from across the globe are taking part in the Geospatial Congress.

The Minister pointed out that the national organizations like Survey of India, Geological Survey of India, National Atlas and Thematic Mapping Organization (NATMO), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and National Informatics Centre implemented several GIS-based pilot projects across a range of domains like waste resource management, forestry, urban planning, etc. to demonstrate the applications of Geospatial Technology.

The Minister said, the government, industry, researchers, academia, and civil society are coming together to establish a quality geospatial ecosystem to build key solutions. He said that democratization of the Indian geospatial ecosystem will spur domestic innovation and enable Indian companies to compete in the global mapping ecosystem by leveraging modern geospatial technologies and realising the dream of self-sufficient India fully. /BI/