Seventy-one-year-old Jack Dangermond, and his wife Laura Dangermond, are often together described as the ‘king and queen of GIS technology’, the software used to create digital maps. In 1969, the duo founded mapping company Esri that has over 40% of the global GIS market share and more than $1billion in annual revenue. In an interview with ETtech, Jack talks about his plans in India.Excerpts:
How did you compete against Google?
We spent 27% of our revenue on R&D. We spend between $300 million a year on R&D. We just launched a billion-dollar software platform. It will be more mobile and easy to access.
What are your plans in India?
The big area in India where we work closely with the Forest Ministry is in protection and management of Indian forests. The first map of Indian forests made in part by the Department of Space in India with the remote sensing satellites showed that over a period of years, Indian forests would be declining very rapidly.
How do you look at start-ups in India now?
Today there are thousands of start-ups that are dominated by venture capitalists, entailing a kind of artificiality in creating business and not a great formula for success. The cycle of taking a VC is troubling because it robs entrepreneurs of their dignity instead of facing their vision. The idea of monetising that by borrowing money or taking VC route was not something I wanted to do because I didn’t want to sell my soul to stockholders and VC people. GIS is considered one of the key growth areas in ICT. In Sri Lanka over 150 Organizations trust GIS Platform to deliver their critical GIS related organizational needs, most of it concentrated in the Public Sector. In fact all of Sri Lanka’s authoritative Maps are created on the ArcGIS Platform. Key Public sector Organizations in Sri Lankalike the Survey Department of Sri Lanka, Road Development Authority, National Water Supply and Drainage Board and all the National Universities have been using ArcGIS for years.
GIS Platform has been in Sri Lanka since the late 1980’s and has been continuing to be the most used, preferred and user-friendly platform for GIS. National Universities conduct Varied GIS courses including Masters Programs which means there is a readymade workforce. GIS has been introduced to the Advance Level Geography curriculum recently, which goes to show the importance of this area as a science to a country.