Touchless and Cashless Parking Will be the Future
Founded by Chirag Jain and Rasik Pansare, Get My Parking (GMP) with a strong foundation of the team, technology, and partnerships is creating a future-proof parking platform to connect the parking industry internally as well as with urban mobility players. The company has uncountable achievements. Recently, it has collaborated with Mercedez Benz to provide better parking experience to their car users. GMP is an award-winning provider of an Interoperable Smart Parking Platform that connects all parking and mobility stakeholders operating in silos. With a clear mission to digitize the parking industry globally, its tech can retrofit legacy equipment and enable cloud native apps and a digital consumer experience. During an email interaction with Nitisha from BISinfotech; Chirag Jain, Co- founder & CEO, Get My Parking elaborates its special offerings and ahead growth plans.
Kindly explain Get My Parking and its special offerings.
The parking industry is a fragmented market with most of the technology being hardware-centric. We are a global leader providing an end-to-end Interoperable Smart Parking Platform that connects all parking and mobility stakeholders who were until now operating in silos.
We digitize and upgrade the parking using IOT software to become intelligent mobility hubs. And we do that in a SaaS business model with easy customizations to accelerate the adoption. This helps parking operators, parking companies, and smart city governments to quickly and effectively modernize their parking services without the need for replacing what they have. And then they can offer value-added services like EV charging, car servicing, washing, insurance, etc for user convenience. And integrate with new models of mobility like shared mobility, last-mile mobility, deliveries, and logistics.
How Get My Parking does differentiate it from other smart parking solutions?
There are multiple things that make our concept stand out. Our platform makes any parking equipment interoperable through IoT and retrofitting, it upgrades old parking infrastructure to a new future-proof ecosystem, thus transforming dumb parking real estate into intelligent mobility hubs. Also, it’s an easily customizable and scalable solution for any parking requirement on the planet.
If I tell you in brief, our products have features like plug-n-play ready-to-deploy functionality, touchless parking solutions, and retrofits with the existing system, speedy customisations, white-label solutions, and low-cost offerings.
How does machine vision help in smart parking? Explain.
The world is gradually going completely cashless. Connected Smart Cars are now hitting the roads, and more and more people are waking up to the power of technology in making their lives easier, including parking. The smart parking system running on IoT-based technology and automation will meet all the new-normal – welcome zero-contact parking demands. Where robotic valet parking will cut the need for unnecessary human contact within a parking lot, so will ML-based dynamic pricing engine powering the app-based payments help drivers make hassle-free digital payments.
We have built an ML layer on top of ANPR products to correct or help disambiguate a license plate number from the incoming feed from the camera. We are also working on developing dynamic pricing functionalities that will help improve revenue during peak times and occupancy during lean times. Think of it like dynamic pricing widely used in the hotel and airline industry.
How Covid-19 has impacted the office parking management?
As people in India and around the world stay put in their homes, the parking industry has invariably taken a hit. We also had witnessed a temporary decline in transactions on our platform. During the peak of lockdown, there was a decrease between 50% to 70% in commuters who used monthly parking facilities. In contrast, the transient parking facilities are seeing a reduction of 95% compared to what it was last year. Educational and work establishments like universities, schools, and offices have shifted to virtual learning and working arrangement. Therefore, parking, transit, and other mobility services have been hit hard. But after the unlocking began and people started moving again, safety and hygiene became the number one priority in all public places. People started expecting touchless services including parking. Hence technology players like us saw a huge rise in demand to help upgrade traditional parking lots into touchless parking. In the last 3 months, our sales team has seen more interest and action globally than ever before.
Kindly share your future marketing strategy.
Our marketing strategy is very targeted and value-driven. We focus mostly on digital marketing campaigns and trade exhibitions to reach the relevant target audience of parking operators, smart city stakeholders, and mobility providers. The recent global pandemic has helped our marketing by making it very clear to stakeholders that a touchless and cashless parking experience is expected by people at public parking lots for safety and hygiene.
Kindly explain emerging trends that are shaping the future of parking.
We need to use smart parking systems that enable drivers to find the relevant parking slot and help operators run the parking operations efficiently. Smart parking is a parking technology ecosystem that automates the various operations involved in parking for all the stakeholders involved. There is a lot of modern technology combined like IoT, mobile apps, cloud software, and data analytics. Moreover, fair dynamic pricing regulated via apps and digital public displays will ensure that motorists are charged fair prices based on their usage time and peak hours, no matter the parking lot.
Finally, automated parking systems or robotic valet parking will further preserve land by maximizing space usage – vehicles entering and leaving a robotic parking facility will be moved up and down the different levels of the facility via robotic arms. Besides being a completely secure method of parking, this technology further reduces the park search time. Smart parking helps drivers explore every possible parking option, which enhances their arrival experience. Besides improving parking experiences and curbing emissions, smart parking optimizes facility usage and introduces new revenue streams for lot owners.
Is there any new project you are planning? Kindly explain.
We have performed extensive deployments in Europe and Asia for some of the largest parking operators that operate across thousands of locations. Now, we are expanding our footprints with a focus on the American market and Middle East Asia. We see promising leads in the Asia-Pacific region. Our key focus as always will remain on maintaining our pioneering innovation and cutting-edge tech advantage. We are launching multiple new products in 2021 (eg; GMP Permit) designed for pure SaaS usage by small and big parking operators globally. We are also actively working with Autonomous Vehicles (AV) divisions of multiple automobile OEMs to enable those AVs to enter exit parking lots through machine-to-machine interaction.
