The Kiwi parking platform growing exponentially in Asia

Finding a place to park close to the venue for a big sporting event is a problem familiar around the world. In some places there’s always a chance you might luck out and spot a hand-painted sign saying, “Park in my driveway - $10”. You’ll certainly see signs like that around Auckland’s Eden Park when the All Blacks are playing. It’s not the most reliable approach though, and who wants the miss the big game?

It got Kiwi serial entrepreneur Toby Littin thinking, and the result is www.parkable.com . Parkable recently completed a high-profile Series A funding round and is now expanding in to Asia.

Littin talked to the Asia Media Centre about how Parkable has turned into a multi-million dollar business finding success in Asia.

What’s the Parkable story?

Parkable was founded in New Zealand in 2015 when I teamed with developer Brody Nelson and entrepreneur Warwick Beauchamp. We were sick of the scarcity, stress, and expense of parking, and wanted to create an app that makes it possible for people with unused parking space to share it with the community. When we first started out, we were working around my kitchen table, thinking that our business was going to be about event parking and people sharing their driveways. However, we soon realised that there were also major parking problems for businesses and commercial car parks, which our technology could solve. 

Today, we have 40 employees and have launched an international product that helps businesses and commercial car parks to manage and share their space, and integrate with hardware including electric vehicle chargers. Our product is available in seventeen countries, and we have formally launched in Australia and Shanghai, China, and plan to expand into Singapore and Hong Kong next.

How long did you research the Asian market before expanding? Where did you go to for advice, support?

In some respects, China isn't the obvious first choice for launching into Asia, because of compliance and regulatory hurdles, as well as the issue that launching a software product in China requires a different technology stack. However, we were approached by a group of investors who are in the business of setting up western businesses in China, and we felt that some of those [compliance and regulatory] issues were mitigated by their 20 years of experience in Shanghai. They were able to provide insights as to the best approach for migrating Parkable for the Chinese audience. We also conducted customer interviews with prospective customers before starting the migration. We also took advice from NZTE staff based in China as well as Callaghan Innovation with regards to the technology migration and difficulties we might face. 

And are you up against existing local competitors?

There are certainly existing parking technology companies based in China, but we believe that the niche we're operating in is a relatively new space, where the competitive pressure is low. That's because while there are a lot of traditional companies in China dealing with hardware and smart parking services, we provide an additional management layer that enables sharing and utilisation of space. Additionally, by combining IOT sensors, we are providing EV charger connectivity and a VIP booking service, which other companies don't provide. 

What were the barriers to your China operation, such as language, cultural differences, legal and copyright challenges?

Because of our relationship with this group of Shanghai-based investors, a lot of these barriers were lower than they would have been otherwise. However, we have put a lot of resources and thought into creating a product specific to the Chinese market, which solves those challenges of language and cultural difference, as well as the legal challenges. 

Is the Parkable ‘product’ in Asia the same as here in New Zealand? If not, what’s the difference? I assume there’s a Chinese language app?

The product in China is very different to the Parkable product offered in the rest of the world, both in terms of language and feature set. This is because some of the third-party services that power the 'rest of world' product aren't available in China, and the Chinese market required a different set of features. For example, there is a Chinese language app, we built a WeChat app, and we use the local payment provider WePay in China, because this is what people are used to using. In the rest of Asia, we will be serving our 'rest of world' product, rather than the Chinese product, because there aren't the same barriers in place. 

The Rugby World Cup has led to an explosion of interest in the game in Japan, and its growing steadily across Asia too. At least we know that, as Parkable expands, we’ll have a much better chance of finding that elusive park when the RWC returns to Asia!