India is one of the world’s fastest growing economies, and for the many startups and enterprises that operate in the country, its complex address system can pose challenges. Addresses in India have multiple levels of information, including localities and landmarks, as well as inconsistent structure. The result is that there’s often inaccurate addresses and confusion for businesses, delivery drivers and customers.

To help reduce this complexity, we’re launching the preview of our Address Validation API in India. Our API is backed by a robust machine learning prediction model built specifically for India to improve address awareness and provide validated detail beyond just street address inputs.

Using our Address Validation API, businesses in India can now detect and correct invalid address inputs as they happen—improving their account sign-up process, customer checkout experience and delivery success. With validated addresses, businesses can also reduce customer support tickets, refund requests and canceled orders.

How our Address Validation API works in India

Addresses in India are unique as they don’t follow a standardized component structure across cities or even within a city.  Our Address Validation API uses Google Maps Platform’s Places data and knowledge of localized address formats with a machine learning-powered prediction model for advanced parsing that we’ve built for India. 

The API standardizes address input, providing everything from typo corrections to street name completion to appropriate locality-specific formatting. It also returns valuable metadata about the processed address, such as individual address components with an accuracy confirmation level, as well as geocodes. Moreover, it can differentiate a residential address from a commercial address, which is important when it comes to delivering packages during business hours.

With Google Maps Platform’s Address Validation API, startups and enterprise customers can improve their customer experience and streamline operations by integrating more accurate address outputs into their products.

Here are some examples of how different industries might use Address Validation:

• Retail/e-commerce companies: Reduce friction at checkout and reduce delayed deliveries by offering shoppers an easy way to correct and confirm their delivery address

• Transportation & logistics companies: Save drivers time by assessing deliverability upon the receipt of an order and helping ensure parcels reach the right destinations with more precise address components, such as apartment numbers. 

• Financial Services companies: Improve new account holder authentication and potentially detect fraudulent sign-ups by using proof of address.

Starting today, Address Validation API is available in preview across India. To learn more and to get started, check out our documentation. To learn more, view our webinar and download the whitepaper.

For more information, visit our Google Maps Platform for India page and watch our videos, which are available with Hindi audio and subtitles.