Travel App Review: " Indian Heritage" - iOS and Android (from The Archaeological Survey of India, Government of India)

App landing page

While reviewing Easemytrip’s analyst call, I came across mention that the company had adopted 4 heritage sites for maintenance under an Archaeological Survey of India program; intrigued, I checked the ASI site, and while going thru it, found that ASI actually had launched an app on iOS and Android called “Indian Heritage” which lists details and photos of the monuments under their charge.

I downloaded it, and this is my review. The app is promoted by the ministry of culture, and at the time of this review, it has 3.5 rating on Play Store. C
ould have changed since this writeup.

First, it’s a great idea to have such an app. There are so many monuments in India dating from a thousand years old! It’s a rich tapestry of great interest to many tourists, if they know about them and can reach them, that is. See how European destinations really go to town with marketing the destinations leveraging apps.  India has a long way to go.

It may not be well known, but the ASI (https://asi.nic.in/) handles a massive number of monuments and continues to handle newer ones found. ASI handles over 3,700 monuments in India, as per September 2023 data, and undertakes overseas work, as was done in Siem Reap, Cambodia on some of the Angkor temples.

App Home Page

This app has three main parts on the home screen (see screenshots). First is the “browse monuments”, then “monuments near you (based on allowing the app to use your location), and third, “upload a new monument”.

The Browse monuments click brings up a grid of monuments ( 2 per row, and many rows- didn’t count) with picture and name. Clicking any one of them takes you onto the page for that monument. On that page are “About”- which has the content about that monument, and two unclickable links – Gallery and Official Notification. Presumably these will be activated later. There is a carousel of pictures, though, so don’t know what exactly the “gallery link” will hold.  

But the interesting thing here are the two other links at the top of each monuments page -Navigate and Locate on Map. Clicking navigate opens up the device map and delivers a path to reach the monument from your current location, and the locate on map puts pin on where the monument is, on a map. Quite interesting and the correct way to do it.

Browse Monuments page

The Monuments around you page opens a map- not the device map, but its own map (I think it may be BHUVAN map because its language and display is quite techy and certainly not designed for a casual audience). On this map are tiny red dots that are the locations of the monuments around your location. Curiously, it was showing quite a large area. Eg, if your location is south Mumbai, it would show more or less all Mumbai (or Mumbai Suburban as it called). That’s nearly a rectangular area of 100km x 50 km. Still, it does show some monuments. Useful for general interest. Clicking on the red dots leads you back to the page that also opens under “browse monuments” and the links described above. That’s fine.

The third page on the app is upload a new monument, and clicking it opens a form to fill- monument name and description. Interestingly, it picks up the GPS co-ordinates from where you are filling the form, so apparently if ever using this page, fill it at the site of the monument, or if from some where else, then you need to know the GPS co-ordinates to fill in (you could get it from Google maps, but cumbersome). But the idea is good. With such a vast country and chaotic in construction, layout and population density, ASI would love to harness the populace to find monuments.

The fourth aspect I found good was the form at the end of each monuments page, where they ask for feedback on your visit. Good idea, and if it works, will help ASI work a lot.

Monuments around you

We don’t know if this app is known much, or is promoted, and what exactly is its end purpose at this point. If ticketing can be added to each monument, that would be great. Then it becomes a useful tourist app; as it stands now, its serves to fulfil a casual curiosity at the various monuments.

The current version on iOS is 2.7.0.

Clunky Navigation

It certainly is on the right track, as far as content and concept goes. But the overall app is very clunky, and less intuitive to use. For example, under the “monuments near you” page, clicking a red dot does bring up a popup, but the fonts are so small that its no use- you must click on “more information” link which opens up the full page; but then navigating back to the map is funny- no back button?

The bottom line

It’s a great app for monuments details and locations. It’s simple and basic, certainly not slick, - some of the photos on home page seem stretched out, but a good base to build on. It urgently needs links to working transport like train schedules, bus routes, or even Uber (which it tries to do via Uber API on device map). And of course, ticketing. One of India’s bug bears is the lack of marketing and information on where to get and how much is the ticketing.  This app can be so good for incredible India – but a long way to go yet.