The Catalan organization CECOT representing over 6000 entrepreneurs, awarded itnig startup Parkimeter with the award for best new company.
Once every year CECOT hosts what they call “the night of the entrepreneur” in Barcelona. Here they award different kind of local entrepreneurs, and this year it was co-founders of Parkimeter, Jordi Badal and Ferran Gatius turn to get honored.
The startup that allow you to reserve, pay and find parking spots for your car, was created in 2013, and has been experiencing massive growth in both users and parking facilities the last years.
Soon 500 places to park
As of today, the company offers their users over 380 different locations to park their cars.
Parkimeter’s plan is to reach 500 parking facilities by 2017 in over 80 cities in Spain.
And it seems like the service was needed, as the startup has parked over 50.000 cars the last three years. To make the parking experience even better, Parkimeter will in a matter of weeks release the new app so you easily can book your parking through your phone.
Even though the area around Barcelona is the one with most parking facilities at the moment, Parkimeter plans for expansion. They raised a seed round this June and plans to start their expansion to the rest of Europe by next year.
“How parking has been changed through technology, is similar to how the travel sector was disrupted 15 years ago,” say co-founder of Parkimeter Jordi Badal.
Smart sustainable cities
Parkimeter recently spoke at the SmartCity conference InFocus 2016, held in the Chinese city of Yinchuan this September.
This year’s CECOT event was also focused on building smart and sustainable cities, that are able to offer services that bring improvements to the lives of its citizens.
At the CECOT conference smart cities like New York and Dubai presented their plans for the future along with Barcelona represented by Parkimeter which introduced their initiatives to facilitate parking according to people’s needs, optimizing traffic, reducing the visual impact and aligning itself with the policies of mobility each city has.
But Parkimeter does only care about the environment, they also care about your wallet, as Parkimeter’s facilities is up to 50 percent cheaper than normal street parking.
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This post was written by Sindre Hopland, media manager at itnig.