Finding parking on any given day, in a crowded city, is no joke. Worse still, if there is a big sports event in town. Baseball fans, Yona Shtern and Aashish Dalal, know the pain of circling the stadium for hours to find parking only too well. In their quest to prevent this sort of a frustrating ‘ city parking situation ’ from repeating, Dalal and Shtern co-founded the on-demand parking app, ParkWhiz.

This transactional platform was built to enable drivers, fleets and connected vehicles to locate and book the best parking spaces in advance. It even allows users to save up to 50% on the parking rack-rates.

In their bid to further their cause, ParkWhiz recently made news by partnering with popular baseball club, Arizona Diamondbacks. The tie-up allows fans to seamlessly find, book and pay for parking spaces before reaching a Chase Field game. Featuring the largest nationwide inventory of parking, ParkWhiz has also entered into agreements with brands including Ford, Ticketmaster, Groupon, and Madison Square Garden.

So, how exactly does ParkWhiz deliver on its promise of freeing the city from its parking woes?

From Parking ‘Argh’ to ‘aha’!

There are plenty of parking lots, garages, and driveways that are being rented out, but they exist in a highly unorganized marketplace. This leaves the daily commuter at their wit’s end, with a tonne of questions – should one haggle for parking rates? What’s a fair price to pay? Or even, where is the closest unoccupied parking slot?

Here is where ParkWhiz comes in. By showing users the costs upfront and reflecting real-time city parking availability at hundreds of partner locations, it seeks to create a controlled and structured parking marketplace. This makes it possible for drivers to make a booking, at a predetermined rate, for a guaranteed parking spot at the selected destination.

On arriving at the garage, users only need to show their ParkWhiz mobile parking pass to gain entry. This means they can get in and out of a parking lot in a jiffy, without any unnecessary documentation. Those who reserve parking spots for later, and prepay, even get great discounts.

What’s more, by carefully vetting each parking lot and garage, the startup offers honest descriptions on the platform. Similar to the review section of Amazon and Uber, ParkWhiz also enables users to check customers’ reviews for each vendor. This is a sure-shot way to make an informed decision about parking purchases, every time.

Today, the Chicago-based app boasts 1 million daily searches, has parked over seven million vehicles and is operational in over 190 cities across North America.

Parking for Businesses

With a business to run, deals to be closed, and clients to be won-over, the last thing on anyone’s mind is to help employees find parking at work every day. For companies that need to, on a regular basis, manage employee and visitor parking — ParkWhiz is the next best thing since sliced bread.

Along with offering employees the convenience of choosing from a wide city parking repository, this technology also features an integrated accounting system that helps keeps track of all parking expenses. Companies can also just book parking for their clients, who will then receive clear directions and a fully-paid-for or discounted e-parking pass.

By allowing the enterprise or employees to book slots in advance, ParkWhiz’s no-cost business programme enables the saving of both, time and money.

Efficient Parking Management in your Pocket

Apart from making life easier for the end user and businesses, ParkWhiz also owns a software that parking owners can use to manage and market their rental space.

These owners need to only sign into the ParkWhiz website, mobile apps, and data APIs to gain widespread exposure for their property. Its seller console also makes paper trails redundant by automating tiresome back-office reporting.

The biggest allure of this solution though is its various inbuilt algorithms that manage matters of payment processing, inventory management, yield management and fraud protection – making the running of a parking business an effortless affair. There is also the ParkWhiz Mobile attendant app that lets drivers rapidly check-in with the built-in QR scanner, improving the productivity of the parking garages – especially during peak hours.

By retaining 15% of the price charged by the parking operator, the parking app is also able to monetize these services quite nicely.

Connected Future of Transport

As part of its endeavour to stay on top of the tech-game, in June 2018, ParkWhiz acquired a Tel-Aviv parking app that supports drive-up mobile payment option.

Very soon, all a user will need to do is drive up to the garage, have their parking ticket generated, wave their phone in front of a payment machine, et voila! The payment is done. This cool new functionality will mean that there will no longer be a need for physical money to pay for parking.

Such technology is really just one building block of the grand future of transportation that is yet to be realised. Once smart roads and smart cars become more mainstream, such parking apps will be more deeply connected to drivers – enabling a far superior driver experience.