Must listen-to Business Chat Podcast for Entrepreneurs
If you are an entrepreneur, or have the longing to be one, this is one interview you should listen to. Joshua Raphael of Parket spoke to me about his journey in building the parking tech company Parket and the determination and perseverance required for success.
It’s truly an inspiring story, and also one of honest reflection about what is takes to build a disruptive business from ground-up.
Key Quotes from Joshua Raphael:
About Learning the Hard Way:
“When I was in high school, I actually started a business selling chickens, because I grew up on a plot. I saw it only cost 30 rand for 100 baby chicks and I thought, you know, if I sell them for 20, this is easy money”. And that was my first journey into actually, “that’s not how it works“. “It’s not from A to B. It’s from A and all the letters in the alphabet to Z”.
Recognising Gaps
“I moved into a friend’s apartment, where I asked him, you know, how do you get a parking bay here? And he said you put your name on the list and they pick your name out of a hat and then that’s how you get it”. “And so I decided to build it for them as well and within the first two weeks of launching, which took me about three months to make, transactions started coming in from guys visiting the workspace and then making use of the parking. Then I started to give it some thought, so maybe I should jump into this full-time”.
Size of the Parking Industry in South Africa
“Sure. rough numbers that I have off the top of my head, I would say large retail is about 300 malls. And then sort of general parking spaces goes all the way up to maybe 1,000 around the country. And some of these malls, if you’re talking revenues, it’s a very large industry”.
Creating Disruptive Technology
“And the beauty of Parket is our product. It takes parking-lots completely digital” “But our market goes from anything from as small as a 70-bay parking lot to perhaps like Melrose Arch, which is about 3,000 bays, which means that we can capture, or the whole market is available for us to capture. Whereas with ticket and pay machines, I think there is a limit to the size of the parking lot, where because they’re quite a bit more expensive than our solution”.
“Our system is built from first principles. So it’s quite disruptive in the sense that it’s very novel compared to ticket and pay machines. It’s built on three cores, which include our access control, which is our own license plate reader access, front and back plate”. Then on top of that, we’ve got advanced management software, and then on top of that, we’ve got digital payments”.
“So we used to say on top of the advanced management software, we’ve got our app, but our product has come a long way since having to requiring the pocket app to pay for your parking in some of these malls. Because I can tell you first-hand that the majority of people, don’t really want to be forced to download an app”.
Differentiating your Product
“And the beauty of our product is also our VIP experience, which is the Parket app”. “And what that means is if you download the app add your bank card and your license plate, you can simply drive in and out of any of the Parket malls or buildings. The boom recognizes you when you arrive. It recognizes you on exits. All of it opens automatically.
Perseverance Pays Off
“So I think we are actually reaching an inflection point now where that incredulity and doubt is disappearing as we onboard more high and higher volume parking lots with really great feedback from the product”.
“So, Parket had pretty humble beginnings, but got pretty ambitious goals”. “You know, parking is a global industry and I don’t think I have found a product that offers the amount of value that ours does as a turnkey solution”.
