VidTeq is a Bangalore based startup that provides video maps for Bangalore city. Video maps are different from the traditional maps that you’re used to. The map provides a video of the actual route to your destination. Embedded in the video are overlays for street names, businesses and other landmarks. A traditional map can be useful if the street names are easily visible and you can locate them en route, which is not exactly the case in India.

This is where video maps help. Since you can visually see various businesses, landmarks and points-of-interest along the way, it becomes easier for you to figure where to turn and how you can reach your destination. Think of it as Google street view, only difference being that Google’s street view shows you a frame by frame capture while VidTeq’s display is presented as a continuous video.

The company makes revenue by placing local business ads embedded in the video. For instance, if you are looking for directions from Forum mall to Garuda mall, the video will contain embeds for various stores @ Forum & Garuda.

I think its a great idea, but i’m not sure if end users will still prefer traditional maps over video maps. I’d ask Bangalore nivasis to try out the service and let me know if they’d actually find VidTeq’s video maps useful.

A couple of suggestions for the VidTeq team:

1) Make the video maps embeddable so folks can embed the maps on their sites/blogs etc. That could also possibly be an additional revenue model. Work with companies to embed video maps on their websites. Customers will be able to locate the company/store easily and in return, VidTeq gets additional revenue

2) Improve the UI of the site. Currently, there’s no obvious / intuitive way to go back to the home page of the site

What do you think about VidTeq ?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 11:52 am and is filed under India Startups. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.