MapmyIndia’s GPS navigators to now pronounce Indian street & road names

MapmyIndia to launch India’s first GPS navigators that accurately pronounce Indian street names & points of interests, across 1200 cities in India

• Forms strategic alliance with Nuance Communications to power next-generation voice-based navigation in India

• New device to be powered by Nuance Communications’ revolutionary text-to-speech engine

• Seven year partnership between MapmyIndia and Nuance

New Delhi (India), July 12, 2011: Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN) and MapmyIndia, India’s leader in maps, GPS navigation and location-based services, today announced a seven year strategic partnership with Nuance Communications to offer street level turn-by-turn voice navigation on its next-generation navigation devices. For the first time in India, MapmyIndia will offer GPS navigators that give voice guidance with accurate pronunciation of Indian street and road names. Under the alliance, MapmyIndia’s new navigation devices will be equipped with Nuance Communications’ Vocalizer for Automotive – the industry leading text-to-speech engine for more accurate voice guidance.

Nuance’s Vocalizer for Automotive will be fine-tuned and enhanced by MapmyIndia to offer, for the first time in India, accurate pronunciations of Indian street names and points of interests across 1200 cities in India. The devices, which are expected to be available within 2011, will support English and Hindi languages initially, with more Indian regional languages to follow.

“MapmyIndia is very proud to partner with Nuance Communications text-to-speech (TTS) engine for our privileged consumers in India. MapmyIndia with its regional team is using Nuance tools to create phonetic database with localized accents of street names, landmarks for different parts of India” said Mr. Rakesh Verma, Managing Director, CE Info Systems (P) Ltd.

“Nuance Communications is the global leader in voice based navigation systems for map providers and automobile manufacturers and we are extremely happy to partner with MapmyIndia in bringing Nuance’s expertise and technology to India,” said Sunny Rao, Managing Director, India and South East Asia, Nuance Communications. “Together with MapmyIndia, we hope to take navigation systems in India to the next level and bring ease-of-use and convenience through accurate voice guidance for Indian vehicle owners.”

MapmyIndia Nuance Press Release