'Driverless Cars Won't Displace Human-driven Vehicles Soon'

Harold Goddijn, CEO of the Dutch in-car navigation systems maker TomTom, talks about the road ahead for transportation technology

- Harichandan Arakali

Netherlands-based TomTom NV, founded in 1991, pioneered in-car navigation systems for millions of motorists around the world, but almost lost the way itself, caught off guard by the surge of smartphones and Google’s free maps, among other factors. But the Franco-Dutch couple—CEO Harold Goddijn (57) and Co-founder and Managing Director Corinne Vigreux (52)—who built the company with two other technologists, dug deep and reinvented themselves to stay relevant. Today TomTom continues to make reliable maps, but also licenses its software, sells telematics technologies and even fitness-focussed smartwatches.

Goddijn was in India recently to visit TomTom’s software development centre in Pune, and spoke to Forbes India about the future of transportation, and India’s push towards electric cars.

Q How has TomTom changed, especially in recent years?

The world has changed, but we’re still loyal to our old mission of helping people go from [point] A to B, and changing how mobility works. [However] we’ve moved into modern map-making, traffic information, telematic services, and online APIs.

We’ve also had to change our business model, partly under pressure from the proliferation of mobile phones, which brings a whole new dynamic. We have become, over the last four or five years, much more of a business-to-business operation. We still have a significant retail and consumer business, but the growth and the strategic direction is much more towards business customers.

We have fantastic technologies for location, mapping, and APIs; we’ve a very good customer base, including Apple, Uber, Microsoft, and most of the important car makers around the world. We’ve reinvented ourselves in the last five years, and now we’re back to grow in the areas we’ve chosen to play.