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Your dream car isn’t really just a dream anymore, thanks to easy financing options. But parking the car continues to be a nightmare, never ceasing to haunt you and, at times leading to a bitter reality.
Dhananjay Bharadwaj’s plight with his car spreads from a dream to a nightmare and ends in a bitter reality. The man saved just enough to buy the entry-level luxury sedan he had long been waiting for. Posted in Krishnapatnam – a town on the border of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu – the Indian Coast Guard employee picked up the vehicle from Chennai in 2018 and couldn’t wait to let his mother away in Delhi enjoy the taste of his success.
A family function at Karolbagh after a few days was the perfect reason to make a trip all the way from Andhra to Delhi. On reaching Delhi, the son took his mother on a ride in his car around the city and pulled over at Gaffer Market to buy her a phone. That’s where destiny rang its chimes.
After a half-an-hour hunt for a space to park his car, Bharadwaj finally spotted a man in a blue T-shirt, with ‘North DMC Authorised Parking’ written on it. The man asked him to park it by the roadside and handed him a neatly printed parking ticket. He dithered for a while before handing over the car keys to the attendant only on trust, but his dilemma was gone when he saw the bunch of keys hanging from his neck. Some of them flaunted brands far costlier than his car.
After two hours of shopping, Bharadwaj was shocked to see that the car was missing. He began losing his temper since nobody could give him a satisfying answer. As the argument was turning into a scuffle, Bharadwaj called up police for help. Convincing the cops was yet another challenge, though his desperate attempts finally revealed that his car was towed away.
But relief was too short-lived. He got his car back very soon, but as he tried to drive, it began veering to the right. It was apparent that while towing the car, the authorities had fixed the rope at the wrong place, causing major damage to the front of the car. Bharadwaj had to cough up nearly INR 1.75 Lakh to repair his dream sedan and didn’t get anything from the insurance for it.
Bharadwaj isn’t the only one, thousands face similar experiences every day in this country of 145 Cr people and more than 5 Cr cars plying on the world’s third-largest road network. But, what sets him apart is that the plight gave birth to a possibility.
The Birth Of ParkMate
While recounting the plight to his friend Abhimanyu Singh, then a Steel Authority of India executive, Bharadwaj wondered why parking was such a mess in India and what caused the lack of a structured approach like West.
What could be done to fix it? They started working on a possible solution. They spent 18 months researching the sector, and studying how cities like New York, London, Tokyo, and Beijing tackled parking congestion. A look into the earlier attempts at this by startups like Park Wheels, Get My Parking, and Rhino Park showed that replicating the European model of online pre-booking for public parking wasn’t best fit for the Indian market, which is chaotic, fragmented, and riddled with inefficiencies. Unlike in Europe, where civic bodies control parking spaces, in India, there are various entities at play – from market associations to private contractors and from municipal corporations to unemployed local youths.
“The entire system is often so dubious that most contractors resist digital solutions to avoid exposing their incomes,” Bharadwaj said.
With the seeds of ParkMate germinating, Bharadwaj and Singh teamed up with Saloni Malhotra to thrash out the roadmap and took the plunge once they had enough funds to sustain for two years without a job.
The idea was clear – eliminate the entire struggle by introducing a system where the user won’t have to search for parking, argue with attendants, or worry about their vehicles being towed.
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A Grand Trial, A Terrible Failure, And A Turnaround
When ParkMate entered the travel tech sector in 2021, it offered an integrated application where the user could enter the destination. On arrival, a ParkMate attendant will take the car to the nearest authorised parking lot. The attendants were deputed at all key locations.
ParkMate ensured vehicle safety by making each car GPS-tagged, which would let the user track its live location and also get a 360-degree view of the parked vehicle. The application had a ‘Get My Car’ feature with which the user could summon the vehicle to another spot if the user stepped out to a nearby place. The company would charge a modest fee of INR 49 for the entire service.
In a trial, the ParkMate founders experimented by wearing fake keys around their necks and conducting a simple, WhatsApp-based service. Between November 12 and 26, 2020 – during Diwali and the early days of the first lockdown – they successfully parked 1,302 cars without even using an app. This trial built their conviction as customers trusted them.
But the official launch of the service encountered a terrible setback. Not a single car was parked by them. The trust they had gained fizzled out because people had perceived it as a DMC-affiliated entity since they had donned DMC tees during the trial.
The founders had two options for the road ahead – spend heavily on marketing through celebrity endorsements or find an alternative approach. They chose to take the alternative route.
The founders pivoted to a valet parking model designed for corporate clients. The new app simplified the entire experience by bringing in an ODB-verified attendant waiting at the location to collect the keys, park the car securely with GPS tagging and condition imaging, and later deliver the vehicle when requested. ParkMate also evolved itself to offer smart parking solutions to shopping malls, office complexes, and hotels in the corporate segment and to parking contractors for government parking spaces.
The strategy paid off, and a user base began building up for ParkMate.
By 2024, when the Indian travel tech market scaled a high of $17.05 Bn with 1,500 recognised startups, ParkMate had built up a user base of 25 corporate clients across 11 cities in the country.
An Inc42 analysis shows that the travel tech sector in India has mopped up more than $23.51 Bn in funding. Noida-based ParkMate has a $2.40 Mn share of the pie raised through four rounds from investors like Cactus Partners, Venture Catalysts and the Marwah Group Family Office, among others.
The startup offers multiple solutions designed to transform the parking experience. “For clients who operate a paper-based service, we provide a SaaS solution that digitises their processes. We charge a monthly licence fee for this software, streamlining their operations and improving efficiency. Our platform generates extra revenue through targeted advertisements.” Bharadwaj said.
It also offers a complete operational solution where ParkMate manages the entire parking process. In this model, it supplies the software, its proprietary system, and the required manpower. ParkMate charges separately for the system, based on factors like the number of gates and lanes, and applies a small management fee over the manpower costs, which are calculated in line with minimum wage standards and include all statutory contributions.
The Roadmap To Future
As the $435.9 Mn parking systems market in India paces up to be a $653.3 Mn opportunity by 2032 at a CAGR of 4.6% between 2024 and 2032, powered by 30 Mn additional vehicles hitting the road every year, smart parking becomes all the more critical for mobility.
ParkMate claims to have hitched a ride on this booming opportunity. The startup said its revenue jumped six-fold to INR 6.5 Cr in FY24. It hopes to drive the topline to INR 10-12 Cr at the end of FY25.
Although its earlier B2C model was unsuccessful, the startup tasted success in the B2B and B2G domains. It is now planning to re-enter the B2C space with a fresh offering in around mid-April for Delhi NCR and by July for Bangalore.
“Looking ahead to the next financial year, our main focus is to build and scale our B2C vertical. Our B2B and B2G segments have seen significant growth and have robust pipelines in place. So, the time has come to invest in the consumer space,” Bharadwaj said.
He acknowledged that the B2C foray would impact their accounts, but he seemed confident of the profitability roadmap the founders have chalked out. As quick commerce startup Zetpo has drawn up the blueprint for profitability for each of its dark stores, ParkMate too has a clear path to profitability for every location with a timeframe of three to four months, he added.
ParkMate entered the market at a time when India was on course to be the third-largest automobile market in the world. Backed by rapid urbanisation and easy financing, the market is expected to lean more on smart, automated parking systems across major cities by 2028, according to reports.
ParkMate’s primary challenge lies in competing with unorganised, fragmented parking operators, who dominate the space with their widespread yet inefficient systems. Beyond them, larger players like Park+ pose a significant threat, especially as they pivot towards becoming a comprehensive car super-app rather than focusing solely on parking solutions.
How effectively ParkMate navigates these competitive hurdles and charts its path to profitability remains to be seen.
[Edited by Kumar Chatterjee]
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