While watching the OSM ranks and daily activity of the top thousand accounts, I’ve noticed a curious pattern: a number of accounts which all edit in the same places, the very largest cities in India (New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai…) Their edits are so similar that the accounts must be connected, as if they are all working for a company, school, or other organization. However, their account pages are blank (unlike, for example, Mapbox accounts, which plainly state their affiliation).

Here are the top “Urban India” accounts: saikumar, premkumar, jasvinderkaur, anthony1, Apreethi, sdivya, shekarn, himalay, Navaneetha, praveeng, harisha, himabindhu. I know of at least 20, but I think there are many more. Many (most?) of the accounts have been active since sometime in 2015.

I am very happy that someone is coordinating work on India’s cities, but I would be very curious to know who it is! After all, companies like Google have whole buildings full of workers (in India) to update their proprietary maps. Is someone doing the same for OSM? I’d like to thank them.

Here is a picture of premkumar’s edits; all the accounts look very similar to this: