SUMMARY
The funding round led by existing investors Epiq Capital, Matrix Partners India and Sequoia India
Park+ will also deploy the funds to shore up its services vertical, expand footprint and hire 200+ employees across verticals this year
The startup has so far raised $54 in funding across multiple rounds
Car ownership solutions platform Park+ has raised INR 140 Cr ($17 Mn) as part of a Series C funding round led by existing investors Epiq Capital, Matrix Partners India and Sequoia India. Post the fundraise, the startup has been valued at around $340 Mn.
The startup will use the funding to expand its presence to more than 100 cities in 2023 itself and to increase its density in existing geographies.
Park+ will also deploy the funds to shore up its services vertical and to build more use cases for its business. The money will also go towards hiring 200+ employees across verticals such as sales, operations, tech and business development this year.
“We will continue to invest our energies in bringing delight to our users (car owners), by strengthening and expanding our services to enhance the car ownership experience for them, throughout the life cycle of their car. Additionally, identifying and hiring talented individuals will remain an important part of our human resource expansion strategy,” said chief executive officer (CEO) and founder Amit Lakhotia.
Echoing the sentiment, Managing Partner at Epiq Capital Rishi Navani said, “Park+ has identified and unlocked business opportunities within the auto-tech segment, which no one else was ready or willing to solve… We are excited to be deepening our partnership with Park+ and look forward to the journey ahead!”
Founded in 2019 by former Paytm executive Amit Lakhotia, Park+ offers a range of services for car owners including car parking solutions, FASTag management, paying and viewing challans, car insurance, locating EV charging stations, among others. It also caters to businesses through the deployment of products such as automatic boom barriers, gate automation, and a full fledged cloud-based vehicle access control management system.
Speaking to Inc42, Lakhotia said that he conceptualised the idea of Park+ at his previous job where parking was scarce. After noting that everyone around him was facing hardships while finding a parking spot every day, he realised that there was a burgeoning market for the product.
After much deliberation, he decided to take the plunge and launched Park+ right before the pandemic hit.
Prior to this, the Gurugram-based startup raised a funding of $25 Mn from Sequoia Capital India, Matrix Partners India and Epiq Capital in November, 2021. Till date, the startup has raised around $54 in funding across multiple rounds.
The startup is also backed by marquee angel investors such as MakeMyTrip’s Deep Kalra, CRED’s Kunal Shah, and Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.
The startup currently offers its services in more than 25 cities including Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi NCR. The platform currently hosts around 60 Lakh car owners, which it plans to scale to 1 Cr in the near future.
The startup claims to have so far deployed its products across more than 3,000 residential societies, 250+ offices and 40 malls across multiple Indian cities. It also currently boasts of more than 2.5 Lakh booking slots on its app.
With a headcount of 700 employees across India, Park+ claims to operate the country’s largest discoverable parking slot inventory and car cleaning platform in the country. Besides, the startup claims to have processed more than 50 Lakh FASTag Transactions since its inception.
Park+ also partners with service providers such as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), car insurers, maintenance providers, car dealers and banks to provide a gamut of offerings. The startup largely generates its revenue through these partnerships with property owners, dealerships and through merchant discount rate (MDR) levied on FASTags.
It caters to a range of big ticket clients such as DLF, Accenture, BookMyTicket, Airtel, TCS, among others.
Park+ competes with players such as Get My Parking and ParkingRhino in the nascent yet competitive parking solutions space.
As per a report, the global automated parking system was pegged at $1.3 Bn in 2019 which is projected to surge to 3.6 Bn by 2027.
