Lilomana's (platform codename) goal is to give underserved communities the ability to create and modify geographic information. Places such as Vietnam, sections of India, and many countries in Africa are underserved by established mapping companies. The cost of creating and maintaining a navigation-worthy digital map, by current popular techniques, is prohibitively expensive. Because of this, to create the map, we have to turn over to those who need the map: the residents, the merchants, and the people on the ground.

Just like a Wiki, Lilomana harnesses knowledge from people who know best, in order to cope with the unique challenges of mapping locations where there may be several or no names for a given street. Also recognizing that the majority of these underserved communities do not have regular access to computers or the Internet, Lilomana leverages the mobile phone explosion taking place in these countries to bring a new form of geographic annotation (both input and editing) to the outside world.

The platform we've created is a hybrid mobile- and web-based application that allows untrained people to enter, annotate, and search through information in the Lilomana geographic database. Through a ranking system, entries in the system are weighted to give them more or less credence. These entries and weights are then processed to make a community-defined map. A portion of the profits obtained from monetizing this map will be used to provide incentives to users to contribute more.