Start-up from Munich is revolutionizing parking: "It's a huge market"

Created: 2022-12-14 07:11

By: Jonas Napiletzki

Fully automatic: The camera on the ceiling captures the number plate when entering and records the time until the exit.

If the driver has exceeded the signposted maximum parking time, he must pay a contractual penalty.

The system helps supermarkets and their customers.

© Parking depot

No more foreign parkers in the parking lot.

A Munich start-up helps supermarkets and fast food outlets.

You already manage 1000 parking spaces.

Munich – Parking spaces are often digitally monitored: Anyone who exceeds a period of time has to pay.

The start-up Parkdepot is often commissioned to do this.

One of the founders explains why third-party parkers are also problematic at night and what makes the GmbH so successful - even though the industry is not very "trendy".

Start-up from Munich already manages around 1000 parking spaces

It is April 2019 when four young men knock at a hardware store in the north of Munich.

They want to know from the store manager whether he has problems with parking spaces.

He has.

The multi-storey car park stands empty while customers fight for parking spaces right in front of the entrance.

Jakob Bodenmüller, his brother Moritz and their friends Bastian Pieper and Yukio Iwamoto want to help.

"Find the problem first, then develop a product," says Bodenmüller.

A few weeks later there is a wooden pole with a makeshift camera in the parking lot.

The young men use a laptop to measure the parking time of individual drivers and ask the registration office about the owners of the cars who have parked too long.

Three and a half years later, the idea – which emerged from a project at the Technical University of Munich – has grown into a start-up worth millions.

Parkdepot GmbH on St.-Martin-Strasse employs over 200 people and manages around 1000 parking spaces in six European countries - with a digital system.

50 to 60 parking spaces are added every month, says Bodenmüller.

So far there are around 100 areas in Upper Bavaria.

Customers of every sixth location of a well-known fast food chain in Germany, every third branch of a Tyrolean supermarket chain and numerous other shops already know it.

Criticism of the camera system: "rip off"

A camera records number plates at the entrance and exit.

If a car is parked for longer than the signposted period of time, there will be a ticket after asking the owner.

"Without barriers with high maintenance costs, without traffic jams and without tickets that are quickly lost," says marketing manager Tamara Oertel.

But not everyone is positive about the offer.

While some are happy about free parking spaces, others speak of "rip-off".

Jakob Bodenmüller, Parkdepot founder and CEO, and Tamara Oertel, Marketing Manager.

© private

Bodenmüller knows this problem.

He, too, says parking spaces are not “trendy”.

But: "Our product only works if the driver is happy too." Parkdepot creates fairness, emphasizes the 29-year-old.

"We set clear rules on behalf of our customers and thus reduce the number of third-party parkers by around 60 to 70 percent."

The frequency in parking areas will increase by up to ten percent, says Oertel.

About 0.3 percent of parkers would pose problems for retailers - they have to pay a contractual penalty that finances the management.

"Their excessive parking time - sometimes for days - takes away parking space that should actually be available to customers," explains Oertel.

Of the 1,200 drivers who use an average parking area in Upper Bavaria per day, around 1,164 keep to the time limit.

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My space

The unpaid parking space is one of three solutions that Parkdepot offers.

"The main customer base are grocery chains," explains Oertel.

In conurbations such as large cities or tourist areas where parking space is scarce, drivers would like to switch to supermarket parking lots and take the space away from real customers.

Free parking spaces are a “huge market”

In the case of paid parking, Parkdepot also offers pay machines as a second variant, into which users type in their license plate number.

Google and Apple Pay with QR code are also connected.

And: "We collect information about the utilization of the space in accordance with data protection regulations," says Oertel.

If the operator has free spaces after reducing the number of third-party parkers, he can rent them out over the long term via the parking depot - the third variant.

The marketing manager says: "For many, this is incomprehensible - but supermarket parking spaces are private property."

Bodenmüller and the three co-founders recognized this problem in 2019.

"It's a huge market that the big tech players like Google or Amazon don't enter," says the business administration and computer scientist.

The company has professionalized over time.

"For one of our first customers, for example, we dug a hole in the grass in front of a branch and set up our camera mast," says the managing director.

Shortly thereafter, the founders received mail from the city - the meadow did not even belong to the customer.

"We drove there in the middle of the night with a van and shovels, dismantled the mast and laid the lawn," remembers Bodenmüller and laughs.

"We now have installation plans that we have the customer sign."

Each parking space is profitable in its own right, which investors really appreciate.

In two rounds of financing, Parkdepot received a good five million euros - "for our growth," says the founder.

Parkdepot's goal of becoming "the leading solution for barrier-free and ticket-free parking space management in Europe" is now being supported with a further 15 million euros.

There are around 500,000 off-street parking spaces in Germany and around three million in Europe, says Bodenmüller.

"We're still at the very beginning and want to double every year."

A Lidl customer has already been caught in Karlsfeld.

She is said to have exceeded the parking time.