Daily Times

Google Maps on Wednesday said the platform now lists over 57,000 public toilets in 2,300+ cities across India. The initiative was launched in 2016 as a pilot in three cities, New Delhi, Bhopal, and Indore, in collaboration with the Swachh Bharat Mission and Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs.

“With Google Maps, our aim has always been to help people as they navigate and explore the world, wherever they are. And we believe that making information about public sanitation facilities easily accessible to people is a key element for social good, one that also constitutes the cornerstone of the government’s Swachh Bharat campaign to promote clean habits and hygiene,” Anal Ghosh, Senior Program Manager, Google Maps said.

The company has been working towards making Google Maps more relevant, accurate, and reliable for Indian users with India-first solutions such as two-wheeler mode and offline Maps.

For this campaign, product and engineering teams of the company have together built a new process, integrating toilet listings into Google Maps seamlessly. Google has worked closely with the ministry to update Maps with key information about public toilets from across India, while refining its systems to accurately surface these toilets through a variety of user queries.

In addition, the Google My Business platform helped the ministry take ownership of these listings on Google Maps so they could monitor visits, ratings, reviews and more, thereby gaining valuable insights that could help them take necessary action to maintain and upgrade toilets.