Parkio - the driver's friend offering a smart city solution

by Startacus Admin

Parkio was one of the startups to pitch at upSTART ‘17, the annual startup comp which Startacus runs in partnership with the fab folk at Digital DNA, and since then they have continued to gather momentum.

Developed by Rob Kramer from Austria and Mihai Negrean from Romania, Parkio is a smart cities solution app that connects drivers with parking spaces - the kind of simple idea that we wish someone had thought of long ago. Whether you want to park for half an hour or for a year, Parkio allows you to search through all kinds of parking spaces in your area. These may be private driveways that are empty during the day, a hotel car park in the quiet season, a school during the school holidays - there are plenty of places people could park if they only had permission.

This permission is given by people who list their parking space on the site, and in so doing make a little extra money in the process. Perhaps an employee calls in sick, meaning there’s an extra space in your company’s car park, or your church may need a new roof (as churches always do, if we’ve learned anything from cozy mysteries) and has an empty car park - simply sign up to the site and list the space. Via the app, all a driver needs to do is locate a convenient space, book it, and go park in it.

Since upSTART ‘17, Parkio has gone on to win first prize in InnoApps’ award ceremony in Brussels, which granted €35,000 to winners. They got the top spot due to the value of potentially become the first EU-wide parking platform ever created. As well as this, Parkio was the only Irish based startup to be accepted for the Lisbon Challenge 2017, netting themselves another €10k in funding, with the possibility for more to help launch themselves in the Portuguese market.

The roads are getting more and more packed with cars, but towns and cities can’t keep building car parks, so until we have some kind of flat pack car (don’t steal that), something like Parkio can save a lot of time and stress.

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• #cars
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• #award
• #upstart
• #smart cities solution
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• #parkio
• #shared economy
• #upstart 17

Published on: 24th September 2017