When digital address books become memory keepers

Mint

14-05-2025

Saving addresses on apps has added fluency to Megha Bhatnagar's love language of gifting. A quick search for a PIN code in the top address bar of food delivery, quick commerce, or e-commerce apps brings up the addresses of her relatives, from Kanpur to Gwalior and beyond, that she has saved beforehand. Just a tap to select the desired address, and she's ready to send everything from Rakhis to no-occasion gifts at a moment's notice. 'Earlier, sending gifts to extended family in different cities meant days of planning—asking around the neighbourhood if someone was headed that way, or queuing at the post office to courier a parcel," says the 50-year-old retired school teacher from Agra. Now, with a few taps and an autofill, care and affection travel faster than ever.
The digitisation of address books has transformed locations from static coordinates into living proxies of connection, memory, and meaning. How we store and use addresses online has arguably pushed consumer internet services—from e-commerce and q-commerce to hyperlocal delivery and travel platforms—to rethink and refine how they integrate address-related experiences into their platforms.
Over the last few years, consumer internet platforms have built more nuance into how addresses are used. Food delivery apps like Swiggy, Zomato now let users add voice instructions along with addresses to aid delivery personnel, and set address-specific preferences like including or skipping cutlery. You can even share addresses from apps like Zomato or Swiggy and their quick commerce counterparts, such as Blinkit and Instamart, with users outside the platform, allowing the recipient to automatically save the shared address to their address book on the respective apps.
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E-commerce platforms like Amazon ask users to specify whether an address is of home or office to optimise delivery hours. Some even allow address changes after orders are placed, particularly for longer-duration deliveries.
Deepthi B, a marketer from Bengaluru, has around 8–9 addresses saved on food delivery apps. 'If we're especially close, I'll even save their office address—I like sending home-cooked meals or surprise treats on particularly stressful days," she says. What she values most is the option to use her number instead of the recipient's when placing an order at their address. 'It helps if I know they're already overwhelmed or when I want to keep it a surprise."
For Phalgun Guduthur, a 34-year-old product manager who also runs an Airbnb in Bengaluru, saved addresses serve a more functional purpose. When new guests check in, he shares the property address via apps like Swiggy and Zomato, making it easier for them to auto-save it on the app and order food and groceries from their quick commerce counterparts. 'Google Maps has the most addresses saved for me, mostly as lists, which I often share with friends and guests," he adds.
Digital address books can carry emotional weight, too. 'I've had to remove some addresses because they brought back sad memories—old relationships, bad workplaces," says Guduthur.
Yet, some addresses are harder to part with. Shreya Punj, a Delhi-based content creator who works in publishing, still holds on to her grandparents' address. 'We lost my nana-nani recently, and I haven't had the heart to delete their address from the apps. I'm afraid I'll forget it," she says.
She has 21 addresses saved on food delivery apps, and every address tells a story. 'You can see which friends are the close ones, friends whose home I treat like my own and often send sweet treats to. Then there's family: parents, in-laws, an older relative who won't order anything, so I place orders on their behalf, addresses of people my parents want to send mithaai to every year, and of course, my own home."
The address interface on most apps still leaves much to be desired. Aditya Mohanty, co-founder of The Product Folks, a community of tech product professionals, highlights a persistent UX flaw, particularly on food delivery platforms. 'The process of setting a PIN is frustrating," he says. 'Since many users struggle to pinpoint their exact location on the map, they drop the pin roughly and rely on the typed address to compensate. That mismatch often results in delivery errors."
Last year, Ola users heavily criticised its in-house navigation system, Ola Maps, for inaccuracies. Mohanty also points to issues with autofill, which users tend to experience, especially when ordering from D2C brands via Instagram. 'You type the building name and expect the rest of the address to auto-complete. But in a country like India, where addresses vary so widely, this system, meant to boost efficiency, often ends up creating more confusion."
However, the version of these apps used by the gig economy workforce is evolving, says Shaik Salauddin, founder president of the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union (TGPWU) and national general secretary of the Indian Federation of App-Based Transport Workers. 'Delivery personnel, especially those who frequent the same locations for quick commerce or food delivery, often add precise details, like '3rd floor, red gate, bell not working', to the backend system, which gets attached to that customer's profile to make future routing easier," he adds.
While there are tools like Google Maps' Plus Codes, introduced in 2018, to offer alphanumeric identifiers for locations without formal addresses that fill crucial gaps in accessibility, Salauddin from Hyderabad makes a broader point: Gig workers are not just passive actors in but are helping co-create the digital address infrastructure. 'It also means our addresses are becoming more dynamic, less about formal postal correctness and more about functional accuracy as defined by the people navigating to us," he notes.
The shift from physical to digital addresses has not only changed how we reach places, but also how we remember and explain them, often leading to unintended chaos as well as comedy. For SG (name initialised for privacy), 31, a resident of The Address in a suburb of eastern Mumbai, the irony of her home's name regularly causes mix-ups with cab drivers. 'It's super confusing on apps like Uber and Ola," she says. 'They'll call and ask, 'What's the address?' and I'll say, 'The Address,' and they'll go, 'Yes, what is it?!'" she laughs. She refers to places being named in similar self-referential ways, like That Bangalore Place or That Art Place in Bengaluru.
Jokes aside, SG says digital navigation has significantly affected her spatial memory. 'I can still recall convoluted walking routes from my childhood, but not places I've been to in the Maps era, even if I frequently visit them," she says.
Bhatnagar, from Agra, who has lived through the shift from analogue to digital, echoes this sentiment. 'Earlier, you memorised addresses and relied on visual cues—like 'the house near the water tank'. That kind of spatial memory is fading now," she says. 'Every family had one person who kept a physical address diary, and everyone turned to them when it was time to send wedding cards." Bhatnagar herself once had 70–80 addresses meticulously noted in her diary. On her apps today? Just nine. Perhaps telling of how digital convenience may have not only shrunk our memory but also our social map.
The Google Maps universe
2018 | Plus Codes, alphanumeric identifiers for places without formal addresses
2022 | India-first feature allowing users to use their current location to find the Plus Codes address for their home
2023 | Address Descriptors to help provide landmarks around a location pin
2024 | Address Validation API, machine learning prediction model that auto-fills complete addresses
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