Indian startup GetMyParking is an end to end digital platform that enables plug-and-play systems to digitize any type of parking space and aims to make cities economically productive and less polluting ina country where the parking industry is unorganized and suffering from huge revenue leakage and lack of transparency.
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“Smart parking combines digitization of parking operations, sensor-based tracking, and data analytics to create efficient parking systems.”
Pooja Apugol
Senior Product Manager
GetMyParking
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Can you shed some light on the concept of Smart Parking? Which countries are major markets today?
In recent years, there has been an increased global thrust on building ‘cities of the future’ or Smart Cities. These are smart in the sense of utilizing cutting-edge technologies to optimize asset use, build capacity, and employ their technology-enabled capabilities to become greener, safer, and more efficient. Smart parking combines digitization of parking operations, sensor-based tracking, and data analytics to create efficient parking systems. A convergence between these approaches will reduce congestion on roads, help city planners devise optimum pricing, and make productive use of physical assets, ultimately easing urban mobility. Today, major markets include USA, Japan, Canada, UK, Germany, France, China, Singapore, India, Austria, etc.
What are the core technologies at the heart of the concept? How far is it from maturity?
Our frugal technology digitizes any type of parking at the most affordable price. Our suite of solutions integrates a complete smart parking ecosystem, which serves all the stakeholders involved, to organize the fragmented chaotic industry with data and execution.
GMP is an end to end digital platform that enables us to plug-and-play systems to handle specific requirements. Our objective towards building this platform is to have a flexible, robust and integrated solution for all parking use cases. Technologies at the core of our systems include IOT, AWS Cloud, JAVA, MYSQL, Angular JS, Android, IOS etc.
Where do you see an opportunity for Smart parking industry in India? Are there any examples in the country?
In India, the industry itself is unorganized and suffering from huge revenue leakage and lack of transparency. City Government being the largest owner of parking real estate also does not get its fair share of revenue. We are addressing a problem which millions face on a daily basis. Most of the existing solutions are not flexible enough to succeed in emerging markets. Over $300 million investment was done in last few years in smart parking companies globally but in India currently the competition is not that aggressive.
There are dozens of international players like Streetline, JustPark, Parkopedia, Appyparking, SpotHero, etc. but they were born in developed markets and hence work only if the assumed infrastructure is in place but come short when brought to emerging markets. The differentiator for us is our innovation allows us to digitize any unorganized parking at a fraction of the cost of any other alternative. None of the other players have the kind of supply side integration like us and rely on operators or expensive hardware to source availability information in cases where such information is dependent on operator it becomes unreliable over time.
What are some of your successful deployments internationally?
We have partnered with Europe’s Largest Parking Operator APCOA to Revolutionize Parking in 13 Countries, to customize and deploy an open IoT platform that provides a seamless mobility experience across all parking touch points. This digital platform will be scaled to all 13 countries in which APCOA operates more than 1.4 million car spaces at over 9000 locations. We have also had some pilots and projects in South East Asia. We believe this market will have more opportunities in the future. In India, we are present in Delhi and have an extensive B2B product run by an extensive operations team.
Where do you see the smart parking industry in the next three to five years?
Smart parking solutions can make cities economically productive, less polluting and wasteful of resources. It is not just about managing the parking spaces. It is about making transportation simplified. The market opportunity for parking is estimated to be over $100 billion and most of the existing solutions are not flexible enough to succeed in emerging markets.
Smart parking will enable the parking experience to be seamless, like the advent of smart cars we will see the entire vehicle driving, parking and owning industry have great shifts. We as a company are extremely excited with what the future holds for all of us.
