Working towards a digital parking ecosystem

When Amit Lakhotia, an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, was working at Paytm, he saw the company’s employees struggle looking for parking slots within and around the office space, and wasting 15-20 minutes every day in the process. He decided to solve the problem with technology and founded Park+ in 2019.

Park+ is a Delhi-based startup that is changing the way people park their cars. With the Park+ app, users can discover parking, book their slot as well as other services such as car wash and pay digitally. The startup also provides radio-frequency identification (RFID)-based security solutions to apartments and corporate setups.

The charges are equivalent to the usual parking charges that car owners pay at parking spaces.

Park+ is live in seven cities across India including Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. The startup also recently launched its services in Hyderabad. In fact, the founder of the smart parking startup, says two IT parks of Hyderabad are in final stages of conversation for installing Park+ system in their premises.

Amit Lakhotia, Founder, Park+ adds: “We are committed to creating new use-cases for car owners and launching in the next 10 cities by the second quarter of next year.”

Addressing car users’ pain points

Talking about the business model of the startup, Lakhotia says, “At Park+, we are creating a new category in the B2C space. This is the first time that parking slots are being booked by customers and being honoured by suppliers through an online platform. We are, for now, only focusing on ensuring that the fulfillment is seamless and maximum suppliers are onboarded so that we can create this digital parking ecosystem in India.”

Once this goal is achieved, the company plans to start charging commissions from suppliers. “In the B2B segment, we lay down the hardware for which we charge fees and also an annual maintenance charge from our clients,” he said.

Lakhotia mentions they have also partnered with IDFC bank to integrate FASTag and the startup is now the biggest issuer of FASTag for ISFC bank for personal cars.

Lakhotia, with Park+, aims at solving the most common pain points for Indian car owners. He says: “We also identified the gaps present in the EV charging ecosystem. To bridge the same, we partnered with Ather Energy, a front-running OEM, to introduce a vast network of EV charging stations across the country. We jointly launched 10 EV charging stations in Delhi and Mumbai.”

“Simply put, we are building a platform where different services for cars can be accessed under the same roof. With services like selling insurance, issuing and recharging FASTag, vehicle access control for buildings, and more already live on the platform, we are set to further add services around PUCC and challans in the near future,” adds Lakhotia.

The startup has 700+ societies, 100+ apartment and 20+ malls on board and has added new clients to the platform which will be going live soon.

It’s B2B model has witnessed adoption across organisations like Vatika, Brookfield, RBS, among others and has clients like Hiranandani and Mindspace in Mumbai and Denali Divyasree in Bengaluru. The platform has onboarded over 6,00,000 cars in the country.

Raising capital

Park+ has raised $12 million in funding from investors such as Sequoia Capital and Matrix Partners, along with angel investments from CEO of MakeMyTrip Deep Kalra, CEO and co-founder of Bigtree Entertainment Private Limited Ashish Hemrajani among others.

“Our model is capital efficient, and we still have a 30-month runway. We may go out in the market in the second half of 2021, but for now, we have sufficient funds to meet our growth plans,” Lakhotia says.