GPS Epiphany !!

Got a bit nostalgic about GPS recently, as I was thinking about how all- pervasive GPS (in Phones) is, now in India. From the delivery folks @Flipkart, Amazon & other E-commerce companies using GPS to navigate to addresses to deliver millions of goods daily, to food delivery startups (Swiggy, Roadrunner) to the ubiquitous taxi cabs (Uber, Ola) to Home Repair Service Startups(HomeJoy, Urbanclap) to just general navigation in the nook & crannies of India, GPS is used by everyone, everywhere....

Just yesterday, after booking an Uber, I called up the driver to make sure that he knows how to get to my home in a gated community, tucked away in a secluded corner of a mega industrial suburb. He said, "Sir, dont worry. I have GPS. I'll be at your home in exactly 20 mins. I know where it is"...

GPS in Phones/Smartphones has probably unlocked atleast a few multi-billion dollar businesses in India in just the last 2 years...As I look back 13-15 years or so ago, I just feel incredibly proud of having been a part of the core team @ Qualcomm that actually made GPS in Smartphones happen...+ Dom Farmer, Tom Rowland, Lalit Daita, Scott Stickeler, Robert Ponce and others who were part of the team that unleashed this phenomenon in the US first !!

I still think the technology that went into taking a chromebook size piece of hardware and shrinking it into a 2mm*2mm size chip that is smaller than the nail of your little finger and runs off a coin size battery is as remarkable now as it was then. Not many people realize this, but GPS is where Physics meets Electrical Engineering meets Real Time software. In case you didnt know, Einstein's General Theory & Special Theory of Relativity are in action at the same time on GPS, making time go faster and slower simultaneously, because the speed and distance of the satellites from earth attract different & opposite forces. If the time on your phone and on the satellite is off even by a few micro-seconds, you will NOT be able to decode any data, let alone triangulating in 4 dimensions. Try building a GPS receiver in a $50 phone with $1 hardware & software that works with and around the laws of Physics & engineering to decode what the satellite is transmitting !!

To conclude, I have come to realize that, there very few times in one's life where you work on something that affects so many people across that world in so many ways and elevates an entire country's productivity / GDP. GPS/Location is one such. Probably Phones, Email/Messaging, Google Search & Flipkart/E-commerce along with Location form part of the top 10, atleast here in India.

Signing off, until probably the next epiphany !! I have a hunch the next one is likely to be about E-commerce :-)