Is this the next Uber?
Here’s a growth story of a small technology startup from Kolkata that promises to have come up with a solution to a very common infrastructural problem and is now planning to go national. Call it the Ola-Uber of parking or something else! Kolkata-headquartered fledgling technology company- Park 24x7 Technologies Pvt Ltd, founded by Avishek Tarafdar and Milind Shethia, has now come up with a platform called Park 24x7, which gives real time parking availability information which helps drivers to pre-book perfect space to park a car. It connects drivers in search of parking with anyone who has a space going spare, whether in a private driveway, parking garage. Drivers can even park at unused parking spaces of hotels, hospitals, stores, pubs, schools, public parking spaces, on street parking zones from our platform to save time. And with getting a parking space on busy, congested city streets turning out to be a nightmarish experience, Park 24x7 is extremely bullish about the prospects pan India. Read On ..
Car owners in Kolkata, earlier used to jostling for parking space during busy officer hours, have already started tasting success of Park 24x7 in few pockets. And come December 15, Park24x7 parking spaces will be available for online reservation at 28 locations in Mumbai including Kharghar, Dahisar, Vashi, Andheri, Parel, BKC, Lokhandwala, Mulund, Juhu, Andheri east, Goregaon, Kandivali, Borivali.
The fledgling parking solution app branded as Park 24x7 aggregates unused parking spaces at hotels, hospitals, schools, pubs, stores, etc. and lists them. “All the users have to do is to type in their desired location for parking with date and duration of booking. The platform then searches for the nearby private parking spaces available in their database. Once the user selects his/her preferred parking space and confirms his booking, he/she is given a booking id. The user has to show the booking id at the destination to get his/her parking slot to avail the reserved parking for him/her. Even the users can buy parking coupons for on-street parking / public parking from the app & they can use the coupon at any public parking space / on street parking at any point of time. It saves a lot of time & this is how we are solving the end point connectivity,” says Tarafdar, a computer engineer ( B.Tech ) from Institute of Engineering and Management, Kolkata and founder of Park 24x7 Technologies Pvt Ltd.
It offers several features-both for parking space owners and car drivers/owners. For the first group, the platform has features like: rent out space easily, managing spaces effortlessly, managing booking easily, chatting with customers, integrating with existing system, generating parking slips from the system. Car divers / users, on their parts, can avail of features like: searching nearby spaces, filtering spaces with available amenity, filtering spaces with nearby hotspots, booking a space for limited hours, booking a space for multiple dates, booking a space on monthly basis, booking parking for events, buying parking coupons at a discounted rate by scanning QR code from parking signs installed outside of the parking space, calling space owners, tracking where you have parked your car, tracking when your pollution check / insurance is due, says Tarafdar, adding, “We are charging a commission from space owners as we are increasing their revenue from booking.”
Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), city’s civic body has already commissioned Park 24x7 Technologies Pvt Ltd to do a pilot project on some of the busiest streets in downtown Kolkata, Piloting is also on in pockets of Mumbai and Bangalore, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar he says, adding, “See, parking is a major problem in most of the cities. Suppose you are going for a business meeting or on some other emergency including medical emergencies, you would certainly not like to waste time on finding a parking space in nearby location. Our solution comes in handy in such cases and therefore the scope is enormous. We are also in advanced stage of negotiations with at least 6 other city authorities to start our operation there by this year end.”
Going forward, this space may also emerge as a highly competitive one, quite like the cab aggregator space. Who knows?
- Debhota Mukherjee (TradeBriefs Bureau) -
Image Courtesy : park24x7.com
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