Park+, a Delhi NCR-based smart parking startup that works toward digitising parking across India, has raised $11 million in a funding round co-led by venture capital funds Sequoia India and Matrix Partners India. Other angel investors that took part in the funding round include Deep Kalra, Rajesh Magow, Ashish Hemrajani, Kunal Shah, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.
Park+ is a mobile app-based platform that provides automated parking system with a cloud-based security solution for daily commuters, corporates, and commercial establishments. The startup helps in real-time parking discovery, booking, payment and tracking. The company is founded by Amit Lakhotia, who earlier worked in Paytm.
“Parking is a massive problem faced across all major urban cities in India. People today don’t have any visibility of real-time availability of parking spaces in the areas they are venturing out,” Lakhotia, who was VP at Paytm and who also had a stint at Indonesian e-commerce firm Tokopedia, told the media. “With technology, we are looking to solve the problem faced by drivers and commuters on a daily basis.”
As per data released by Park+, drivers spend 10-15 minutes every time they look for a parking spot. India has around 50 million cars, and about 70% are present in the top 15 cities. The parking infrastructure in these cities is highly unstructured and incapable to deal with such a high density of cars.
“The best startup ideas solve real-world pain points… Parking is a very tough problem to solve, and we felt it would take a founder like Amit to build a parking platform company for India,” said Shailendra Singh, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital Singapore.
“Amit’s depth and breadth of experience in working with leading internet companies is a big asset for building Park+ into a large and successful company,” said Avnish Bajaj, Founder and Managing Director, Matrix India.
