In this “Meet a GeoWorks’ GeoMember” series, we spoke to Ocean Ng, the COO and Co-founder of Mapxus about his company, solutions and challenges faced.

1. Tell us about your company and its solutions.

Mapxus is a global indoor map and positioning technology company. Most smart cities, like Singapore, are covered by hundred thousand buildings. Compared with the outdoor environment, the indoor world is a maze to everyone.

Title text

Dr John Chan (left), CEO and founder of Mapxus and Ocean Ng (right), its COO and co-founder.

www.commontown.com

To facilitate future developments and living in smart cities, the digitalisation of indoor map and the provisioning of indoor positioning service as outdoor are very critical to success in the new digital world. That’s why we created Mapxus.

Mapxus can make the city-based indoor map possible, as our infrastructure-free mapping method can cut the cost of indoor map implementation and maintenance by more than 90%. Our indoor GIS tech sharing also enables everyone to build indoor solutions and applications, such as barrier-free navigation, ESG smart buildings or location-based gaming.

2. What is something about your company that the general public might not know about?

We are an AI company but in the GIS field.

3. What are some challenges you have faced in your work?

City-based indoor mapping is a very new concept to the market. Most traditional indoor solutions are building-based and require hardware installation. We have great challenges to educate the market and demonstrate the new success of the global indoor map solution.

4. How has your experience with GeoWorks been?

Title text

Integration with OneMap

Thank you very much for the great support by GeoWorks to facilitate the introduction of Mapxus technology with different stakeholders in Singapore. GeoWorks and SLA shared with us much domain knowledge in the Singapore GIS market. We are also very grateful to have the chance to co-work with SLA on the integration of OneMap data for Barrier Free Navigation application.

5. How does geospatial technology help you in your work?

We are professionals in indoor mapping. But for the outdoor part, we don’t have the accurate data. That’s why we are very happy to have SLA’s support in the integration of OneMap in order to provide the best outdoor to indoor navigation experience to the end users.

Title text

Indoor navigation in Japan

6. Are there any challenges that come with working with geospatial technology?

With the support of SLA and GeoWorks, it is not a problem for us.

7. In your opinion, what skills are needed to work in the geospatial industry?

In the new era of geospatial industry developments, mutation with different domain knowledge can facilitate the innovation and growth of new solutions. I believe AI, IoT, and cloud computing and blockchain should be the new skills to be tapped on.

8. Do you have any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?

Nowadays, it is very difficult to achieve successes alone. We believe collaboration and partnerships can bring the best solutions to society. That’s why Mapxus focuses on indoor mapping technology and data infrastructure. We hope to co-work with different domain experts to enable their solutions with indoor map easily. Open and collaborative mindsets are very important to the success in collaboration.