Ambarish Kenghe, Vice President, Google at Google I/O Connect 2024 event in Bengaluru on July 17, 2024.
Credit: DH Photo/KVN Rohit
Google has announced it'll slash the Maps platform fee for local developers and startups in India.
The news comes just a couple of weeks after Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal cut ties with the Google Maps Platform for his company's cab service. Aggarwal has opened his own Ola Maps platform for Indian developers.
Ola is also offering a year of free access to Ola Maps via the company's Krutrim Cloud and developers and app companies are entitled to get Rs 100 crore in free credits.
During, I/O Connect 2024 developers conclave in Bengaluru on July 17, the search engine giant revealed that it would reduce the Google Maps platform fee by up to 90 per cent in India.
For select companies, the pricing has been reduced by up to 70 per cent on most APIs.
Furthermore, those developers and companies who are collaborating with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) are eligible to get up to 90 per cent off.
Ambarish Kenghe, Vice President, Google at Google I/O Connect 2024 event in Bengaluru on July 17, 2024.
Credit: DH Photo/KVN Rohit
The new India-specific pricing will take effect from August 1. Further, developers will be able to pay the fees in rupees instead of US Dollars. Current partners will get the option to pay in rupees next month. The new customers will be offered payment options only in the local currency.
Most of the cab services, e-commerce apps, and food and grocery delivery apps use Google Maps in India.
Currently, customers are charged $5.00 (rs 418.20) for 1 to 100,000 requests. From August 1, customers will have to pay $1.5 (Rs 125.45) for 1 to 5,000,000 requests for access to the Google Maps platform.
Google Maps Platform Fee change in India
Credit: Google
"Customers with accounts that have billing and a large majority of usage in India will be eligible for this pricing. Customers select the appropriate billing country when creating their billing account in the Google Cloud Console. Google will monitor eligibility and may disqualify non-eligible customers from this pricing," the company says in the Google Maps Platform help page.
Aggarwal on X (formerly Twitter) said Google's move to reduce the Maps Platform fee is a little too late and announced to share new updates on Ola Maps services soon.
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