Easy to spot

Startup saga

With growing traffic in the city, finding a parking spot has been a hassle for a long time now and to leave one’s car unattended on the roadside is a scary thought. In an attempt to solve this problem, Tridib Konwar, along with friend Mriganka Deka, has come up with a venture that enables vehicle owners to spot a parking slot by virtual means.

‘ParkingRhino’, launched this February, is a marketplace for providing parking space across Bengaluru. “Personal experience prompted me to come up with the concept. This app-based venture has examined one of the most  pressing concerns in Tier-1 and Tier-2 cities — finding a parking space. We help vehicle (two and four-wheeler) owners to search for nearby parking spaces, along with other information such as hours of operation, parking capacity, availability of valet services and car wash facilities,” explains Tridib.

The app tracks everything in real-time and currently has more than 2,000 verified parking locations, including Spencers, Columbia Asia Hospital, Reliance Digital and Trends, along Brigade Road, Fame Cinema and Utility Building.

Though the venture is operational only in Bengaluru at present, the team looks forward to expanding to other cities by the end of this year for both Android and iOS users.

“We have a few competitors but what makes us stand out is that we work on a real-time basis and have 80,000 parking slots altogether in the city,” says Tridib.

Users have the option of selecting a space via the app but the service is only available at a few locations.

The founders are focussing on creating on-demand booking options within 2-km radius to make parking convenient and smooth.

As for the challenges, Tridib says the authenticity of the parking information can be an issue, for which the team needs to keep updating the information and availability of the spots in a certain place at regular intervals.

They plan to include heavy vehicles and the three-wheelers looking for parking, especially at night. 

“We have been getting a very positive response from people and they are happy to find an app like this. Now, what we need to focus on is to keep the information reliable while maintaining the user-friendly nature of the app,” he says.