Munich-based Parkdepot raises €4.2 million in seed round

Munich-based Parkdepot is on a mission to become Europe’s largest parking lot manager within the next two years, and has raised €4.2 million in a recent seed round.

Led by Amsterdam-based henQ, Parkdepot has demonstrated a growth rate of 30% each month of its existence and now counts over 50 employees. The funding is expected to continue said growth rate as well as further develop product innovations tailor-made for the firm's growing customer base.

Not a topic one thinks about on a daily basis, but Europe’s current parking lot market is fragmented between a few traditional management companies and upstart parking technology companies. Parkdepot is taking a different approach to managing where your ride is parked and stored by combining elements from each sector and innovating with a camera, as opposed to traditional methods which involve barriers, ground sensors, and on-site staff.

Parkdepot is fully digitising parking lots and reducing costs associated with the automated process, mainly through the elimination of on-site staff and no expensive hardware required to get set up. The system uses a camera to scan cars that enter and exit parking spaces.

No rocket science to be sure, but clearly there’s a market for the technology, as Parkdepot counts McDonald’s as a customer in Germany, and quotes that 1 in every 8 McDonald’s parking facilities is managed by the Munich startup.

“The founding team has impressed us with their operational excellence and the consistent improvements in everything they focus on, from strong growth in the number of parking lots at Germany’s biggest grocery retailers REWE & EDEKA and also McDonald’s to reducing the average installation time from one week to just a few hours,” comments  henQ’s Mick Mackaay. “They have achieved all of this in a very quick and efficient manner with little funding raised to date.”