Parking Koi
‘Parking Koi’ is a startup with the core value,” Unlock the hidden parking spaces in Dhaka” promoting the parking space sharing platform for cars in Bangladesh. Mr. Rafat Rahman, the founder of Parking Koi aims to utilize the unused parking spaces in Dhaka and eliminate illegal parking from the city through this platform.
Brainstorming phase of ‘Parking Koi’
Mr. Rafat Rahman has been residing in the US for last 12 years and worked in Fortune 500 companies like HP, Intel and Bank of America. Currently, he olds
the position of ‘Senior System Engineer’ in the largest insurance company of America. Finding parking space is such an issue that people undergo in almost every metropolitan cities. He found the problem very prominent in Dhaka as there is not enough parking space. The consequence is horrendous traffic condition due to abrupt parking. It fueled the necessity of creating a platform where parking space are found upon necessity.
‘Seedstar Award’ and stepping up for the next level
The app Parking Koi was launched on April 1, 2018. On April 10 his team applied for GP Accelerator and got assistance in commercializing the app and mentoring on customer dealing, designing the financials and so on. Meanwhile the team became one of the top 10 teams in Seedstar and Mr. Rahman is proud that his team will be representing Bangladesh at Seedstar 2018 in Switzerland. The app was in beta phase; however, the newly designed app is very user friendly. The app already has 25 thousand download and 12 thousand active users.
Blueprint of ‘Parking Koi’ operation
Parking Koi has 3 founding members. The founders consider Parking Koi an IT company first and later a parking solution platform. Right now the total size of the team is 31. The startup has its own app developer team which leverages the company to fix any problem within an hour. Parking Koi has six perational division in Dhaka city and the operation team is working to source the single parking spaces across the city. The team is also trying to collaborate with the owners of shopping malls and multi storied buildings to utilize their parking spaces.
The marketing is exclusively done using online platform, especially social media. The operations team has two units of 24 members. These units collect lead from Facebook and receive customer response on company’s behalf. People who wants to rent out their parking space can reach them online or they can end message on Facebook or contact the team through the app. The company wants to cover the metro cities first and other than the metro cities the demand for parking space is less. Parking Koi plans to start its operation in Chittagong on 1st November and in Sylhet on 1st December. The company also has expansion plan in Asian market in future.
Market penetration strategies
Parking Koi got popularity through social media marketing and it plans to organize a roadshow as part of offline marketing to capture the segment who does not have social media exposure. Parking Koi also has plan to work with Gulshan Society, DMP and Dhaka City Corporation to mitigate traffic problem. Parking Koi is generating hourly 1000 transaction per day. Users can make the payment both with cash and card. Since cash transaction is popular in Bangladesh, Parking Koi is primarily focusing on cash payment. Parking Koi is a new concept for Bangladeshi people and they prefer to pay cash after parking since the hourly charge is around BDT 20-25. Parking Koi has collaboration with SSL Commerce and the team wants to educate the users to make cashless transaction through their payment gateway. They are also making discount offers to encourage users to go for cashless transaction. Parking Koi’s monthly transactions (monthly parking rent) are done through bank to bank, credit card or through bKash.
Rafat Rahman
CEO, Parking Koi
Parking Koi doesn’t have any specific pricing model. The hourly parking fees ranges from BDT 5 to BDT 30 and the monthly rent from BDT 1500 to BDT 4500 depending on the location. The company keeps 20% commission from the parking owners and 10% from
who takes the parking space. The proportion of the commission varies time to time; however, the ceiling is 20%. The company gradually increases the commission from the host as the number of parking request increases.
Challenges in the path of glory
Entrepreneurship itself is very challenging. Parking Koi is dealing with a sensitive asset like cars. Ensuring the security of these cars was very challenging. Fortunately, the team has ensured 30,000 safe parking without any occurrence.
Plan down the line
According to The Daily Star, 30% of the traffic problem occurs due to arbitrary parking, and Parking Koi wants to eliminate illegal parking from Dhaka, Chittagong and other cities. The team also plans to work with the government to arrange parking space around the metro rail station so that people can park their cars safely and ride on the train. Parking Koi is trying several models to find the best match in Bangladeshi context with trial and error. It
initiated with profit sharing model and planned to decide on the business model it wants to stick with. Parking Koi wants to encourage people to use paid
parking space through discounts.
Monthly Business Review- December 2018
“The asset quality is deteriorating in the highly fragment banking system.”- the remark came on the recently published Moody’s outlook for Bangladesh banking system. Despite being a robust economy, Bangladesh is witnessing ever-growing trend in bad loans. The chronic deterioration in asset quality is ultimately hitting the banks’ profitability due to covering up for high credit cost.
For the nature of banking sector whose core job is to dealing with mass people’s money, bad loans are nothing new or unique. However, the pace it is growing is alarming. Aggressive endeavors by banks for portfolio target in this populated banking sector played substantial role for rise in NPL. Some other factors like lengthy judiciary process, uncertain business environment and no evidence of exemplary measures against habitual defaulters fuel the growth of piling bad loans. Countries like China, who drastically curbed their bad loan rate over the years, used social shaming as a technique to combat their bad rates. Then again, Malaysian government introduced separate Asset-Management companies to recover the non-cash collaterals by converting them to cash. In Bangladesh, in order to curb the bad rate, whereas due diligence on bank managements’ part is required, the judiciary process needs to be streamlined as well. Also, it is high time the banking sector altogether should take strict social measures against the habitual defaulters in order to combat their default culture.
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