Park+ brings smart parking solutions at residential, retail, corporate buildings

Car parking problems in cities have become increasingly prominent due to urbanisation, population growth, and the rising number of vehicles on the roads. Park+ is a one-stop solution that solves the daily challenges faced by car owners - ranging from parking, FASTag management, car insurance, automated vehicle access control systems, and EV charging stations.

Park+ today hosts India's largest community of car owners on its platform with more than one crore users. It has an inventory of over 2.5 lakh parking slots, over 3,000 residential societies, 250 offices, and 40 malls across 50 Indian cities. In an exclusive interview with Bizz Buzz, Park+ Founder & CEO Amit Lakhotia tells how their platform is actively working towards optimal parking management

When the journey of Park+ was started and how did you expand to all major cities in India? What made you come up with this solution?

Buying a car is one of the biggest investments for an individual/ family. At least in India, it equates to a sense of achievement/ success and personal satisfaction. However, after those initial days, the real burden of car ownership comes to the forefront. Daily hassles such as - daily parking at office, weekend parking at malls, tracking/ paying challans and long queues of entry/ exit take center stage.

We at Park+ identified these daily hassles for car owners and took something that had historically been painful & intimidating – finding a parking spot, tracking challans, FASTag recharges, car cleaning, car maintenance and made it effortless. We have the largest community of car owners in India – 1 crore cars on our platform.

At Park+, our main business objective is to bring delight back to car ownership. We consider ourselves at the core of the car ownership ecosystem, with other allied service providers like - Auto OEMs, car insurers, after sales service providers, maintenance providers, car dealers and banks, providing a support structure.

We are enhancing the car ownership experience for car owners, throughout the life cycle of their car. We connect with our users and their cars almost every day, starting with a carwash, parking, FASTag recharge and challan updates. Our partnership with these stakeholders is very deep as we offer them access to the largest online community of car owners, incomparable to any other platform in India.

So far, how many residential apartments and corporate offices have been associated with Park+ in Hyderabad and across all major cities in India?

Our access control systems are now present in over 50+ cities, 3,000+residential societies, 40+ malls, 150+ corporate parks across India. Specifically in Hyderabad, our access control system is live in nearly 50+ residential societies and marquee corporate parks including – Amazon Financial District, Smartworks Coworking Spaces and Awfis Coworking Space.

How affordable is Park+ to the residents in gated communities? What are the challenges in adopting this solution?

Our access control systems are highly affordable for residential societies, as we allow resident welfare associations (RWAs) to take up a monthly rental option. This enables them to sub-divide the cost of installing the system. The primary challenge in adopting a smart access control system is the resistance to change and the lack of technical understanding amongst RWAs.

Once the system goes live and the benefits are visible and experienced by all the residents, our system becomes integral to the society's daily routine.

What are the further expansion plans of the company in India or abroad?

At Park+, our main business objective is to bring delight back to car ownership. We consider ourselves at the core of the car ownership ecosystem, with other allied service providers like – auto OEMs, car insurers, after sales service providers, maintenance providers, car dealers and banks, providing a support structure. We will continue to identify and solve car related hassles for car owners in India. Our aim is to solve for the Indian market first and then step abroad in the next 12-18 months.

How much have you invested in the technology and the application till now? Are you planning to raise further funds in the near future?

We are backed by marquee investors like Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners and Epiq Capital II. We have closed our series C round in January 2023, raising about Rs 140 crore. In other words, we are well positioned with respect to funds.

Are there any new products or solutions in the pipeline for optimal parking management? Are you looking for any tie-up with government or private organisations to promote your app?

The need of the hour is to unlock latent parking opportunities like shared parking solutions, private land utilisation, FASTag-enabled parking and real estate development. It is a basic necessity to ensure that residential societies/malls/ corporate parks create dedicated parking lots while planning any kind of development.

A robust parking first approach will ensure that any real estate development which takes place has legal parking lots for users/residents. Park+ has partnered with BEST to unlock over 50+ bus depots across Mumbai to the public. Vehicle owners can now park their car at any of the BEST bus depots between 8 AM - 10 PM, at a nominal rate.

The same initiative can be replicated in other cities, to unlock such shared parking opportunities within high density areas. The government should take steps to partner with private landholders to create legal parking spaces. In other words, any private land owner should be able to submit and get an approval for running a parking lot on his/her land.

Through this initiative, land owners will be able to create a revenue stream and add to the parking lot inventory at a city level. We have partnered with Dehradun traffic police to promote this migration from vacant plots to parking lots. The government needs to promote smart parking solutions like FASTag parking systems, which allow parking lot owners to manage, track and monitor vehicles digitally.

The future of parking systems will depend heavily on the collaboration between governments, real estate developers and smart parking providers. As our cities get denser and car ownership increases, there will be a need to provide citizens with smart parking solutions which can monitor/track and offer seamless parking experience.

As a serial entrepreneur and an angel investor, you are investing in what kind of startups?

The digital first companies in India will continue to attract investors in the short and long term. The businesses which are frugal and are backed by a sound business model will remain on my radar. For me, B2B (business-to-business) internet companies will continue to attract my attention.