With an ever-rising number of private car registrations and more restrictive mobility policies in urban environments, the competition for parking spaces is resulting in increased traffic, congestion, emissions, as well as stress for drivers. According to research by UCLA’s Professor Donald Shoup, 30% of urban traffic and corresponding emissions occurred during the search for parking spaces In 2011.
Search, compare and pay for available parking spaces
The Munich-headquartered Parkamo is attempting to solve this problem by creating a solution to these challenges: providing a platform like Booking.com for parking, through which users can easily locate the best parking options in the vicinity, compare prices, and avoid areas with high parking pressure. Founded in 2019, this woman-led startup is offering the world’s first climate compensated parking and helping solve urban congestion through an app which allows drivers to search, compare, and pay for available parking spaces. The tech startup has announced its €2.1 million funding round.
€2.1M funding
Led by Stockholm-based Aggregate Media (investor in Readly, Tibber, and LeoVegas, among others), and with participation from venture builder, EPTI, and family office, Allanova, the new investment will be used by the startup to grow its tech team as well as its core markets of Sweden and Germany.
The climate tech startup is furthermore planning to deepen its partnerships with municipalities, parking app providers, and parking garage owners.
What’s in it for users
In addition to on-street parking, users have access to Parkamo’s own parking garages and private parking spots, as well as other on-street parking places through consolidation of other parking apps. Parkamo has doubled its consumer base so far in 2021 (with average month-on-month revenue growth of 48%), whilst parking space rentals via Parkamo have risen by 370%. The app is currently active in 20 European countries (including the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the Nordics).
More efficient urban parking
Katharina Wagner, co-founder and CEO of Parkamo (who has spent a decade in the smart mobility space, including previously as Head of Business Development Europe at Car2Go) said: “Parkamo has experienced such a significant level of user engagement in 2021 and proven its value to our users and partners. Through their support, our investors validate the attractiveness and growth potential of our service and enable us to offer Parkamo to even more users around Europe. For Europe’s cities to thrive post-lockdown, urban parking must be made more efficient and sustainable, and Parkamo is enabling this to happen.”
The startup is on a mission is to enable sustainable parking by constantly introducing new features to further this goal. An example is its “Find & Park” feature which helps drivers to identify areas with highest parking space availability, making use of exclusive parking spaces through its peer2peer parking programme, and, last but not least, CO2 compensating for all parking done through the app.
