Aparqa

LATAM is the only region in the world where lethal violence increased between 2000 and 2019, and its citizens identified crime and violence as their main concern.  This causes a huge lack of security not allowing the promotion of physical and mental health thus decreasing the health of a city.  Aparqa focuses on how decrease this lack of security and theft by promoting a better security where to park, real time information, digital payments.

Aparqa focuses on solving a social problem in which the main actors are motorists and cities that suffer from a citizen security system that can provide better security, parking, digital payments, and the capture of data in real time that can be processed by public institutions or police centers worldwide by providing a solution through the use of a mobile technology obtaining information in real time and provides the location of found stolen vehicles, parking.

Currently, the payment and inspection of public parking places is done in a semi-automatic manner. The driver parks then the city inspector places a printed ticket with the parking time on the window of the car, there is no security check of license plates either. At the moment that the driver is about to leave, the inspector approaches the car to collect the parking according to the time that has been used. There are times when more than one car may be leaving at the same time causing payment problems as well as traffic jams and pollution due to the discharges coming from the cars.

For example, in Chile, as well as in other countries in the region, the automotive fleet continues to grow. On the one hand, there is a study on urbanism at the Universidad Diego Portales, which states that 52% of the roads in the district of Santiago Centro are used as parking lots, either on the side of the street or both.

Aparqa as a complete city solution is serving every actor in the society.  On one hand it is helping car drivers to easily find parking spaces and on the other hand is providing cities and other organizations with real time data for BI research as well as security and better ways to help society in general.

Aparqa is the application facing the user where you can:

• Find the nearest parking lots
• Find parking according to a predetermined address
• Prices for each parking zone
• Digital payment for parking
• Notifications of time remaining to extend the parking time
• Display of transportation routes near the parking point
• Ranking of parking and area

Aparqa Plus is an application for the examiner where you can:

• Check parking payment
• Time remaining according to the payment made for each parked car
• Verification of plates of parked cars with security databases
• Notification of a problem that may be happening
• Printing or sending by email to the user, through the system, of any fine that may exist

The solution is based on the use of mobile technology developed by Aparqa.  Aparqa obtains information in real time and provides the location of the parking spaces, search of public and private parking according to a predetermined address, price for parking in a specific place, available open spaces, time at which a space will be released, digital payments for parking, extension of the parking payment, etc.

The city will provide parking inspectors a mobile application allowing reading of licenses plates, verification of parking payment and security car queries by reading license plates linked with other security systems.

Aparqa is also offering other online features as an added value to the use of the application to improve the information received by the city and provided to the user. As previously mentioned, Aparqa's mobile technology is divided into two mobile applications, Aparqa and Aparqa Plus, which work together through web services and geospatial databases.

Aparqa has a direct impact on many aspects of the day to day of the different cities:

• The perception of security is immediate, users and inspectors can have a real-time communication through web services allowing them to have information about the parking place, digital payments that are safer than cash payments, ranking of parking areas and surrounding areas, information about other services attached.
• It is the users themselves who will be able to issue rankings of the services and different areas where Aparqa is located, giving a feeling of belonging as the users themselves influence the way in which the different service points are reflected. In addition, loyalty / loyalty campaigns can be carried out to improve the services provided.
• As long as the sense of security and belonging grows positively with the use of Aparqa the cities may carry out other types of work either independently or through videos or commercial / marketing that can be introduced in Aparqa as an information medium.
• Aparqa is developed internally, that is, the source code belongs to Aparqa and it can be updated in a fast and effective way according to the needs that are presented.

Unlike other applications that are already in the Market, Aparqa’s vision is to provide security and parking information in real time with the use of geo-spatial technology applied to smartphones as well as feedback from the citizen’s eco-system created.  It is important to point out that this is social tool that not only provides information between its members but also with police stations and city institutions to be able to create new ways to fight insecurity in the cities where the application is.

The technology platform used in Aparqa relies in Android Mobile and iOS native applications, Microsoft based services as well as a SQL Server GeoSpatial Database. These are state-of-the-art platforms that provide Big-Data, geo-spatial information as well as enhancing the communication between all the players in this eco-system.

This solution creates a citizen’s eco-system that provides feedback in real time about security in the city for themselves and for their vehicles.  The base technology already exists and Aparqa has put it together to create a security platform. 

Aparqa has a direct impact on many aspects of the day to day of the different cities:

• The perception of security is immediate, users and inspectors can have a real-time communication through web services allowing them to have information about the parking place, digital payments that are safer than cash payments, ranking of parking areas and surrounding areas, information about other services attached.
• It is the users themselves who will be able to issue rankings of the services and different areas where Aparqa is located, giving a feeling of belonging as the users themselves influence the way in which the different service points are reflected. In addition, loyalty / loyalty campaigns can be carried out to improve the services provided.
• As long as the sense of security and belonging grows positively with the use of Aparqa the cities may carry out other types of work either independently or through videos or commercial / marketing that can be introduced in Aparqa as an information medium.
• Aparqa is developed internally, that is, the source code belongs to Aparqa and it can be updated in a fast and effective way according to the needs that are presented.

Currently we are serving 150 people due to the fact we just released our initial version.  Within the first year we serve 10,000 people between Perú and Chile.  We expect to server over 31M in the next five years. 

• The Total Potential Market Opportunity in LATAM alone is 626M
• The Serviceable Market is 313M
• The Serviceable Obtainable Market is 31M

At an international level there are already solutions such as PayByPhone, ParkWhiz, Passport, JustPark. However, these solutions are found in the United States and Europe, whose realities are completely different from those we have in our region. Security needs, geo-referencing is not existing using those platforms.

Our vision in the next five years is to provide tools based on society’s real needs by studying the data acquired by the application in real time. We see Aparqa as the go-to application for city security in the LATAM region.

In addition, our team has the know-how of cutting-edge technology used in these other regions through its CTO. The point of view of Aparqa comes from a social and security approach beyond the commercial one that comes integrated to the final solution.

We have defined five barriers to entry for this new market:

1. Economies of scale: We are aware that service volumes impact on efficiency; It is for this reason that one of the goals of Aparqa is to reduce the costs of the services provided to increase the amounts of services used.
2. High initial investment: This aspect we take as a barrier because for the moment the investment is personal, and all the development is taking place in-house. However, these costs will go down and become more specialized when the MVP is in operation and the focus is marketing and user experience.
3. Access to suppliers and distribution channels: In the case of Aparqa, the suppliers and distribution channels are the same communes or central government. This can be an initial barrier but as Aparqa is used the public in general will see all the added value that this solution has.
4. High differentiation of some existing product: In the current market there are no solutions of this type, the existing solutions are more of an informative mode indicating where the private parking places are located and which areas are secure. Aparqa sees this as a more informative barrier than a product barrier.
5. Legal barriers: In the case of our industry this barrier is more at the macro level with laws that can be issued in the future. Currently the law dictates prices and / or maximum quotas and requires compliance with special requirements.

1. Economies of scale: Aparqa will reduce the costs of the services provided to increase the amounts of services used.
2. High initial investment: Aparqa will continue providing all the development in-house in order to keep costs down now that the MVP is already in the Play Store.
3. Access to suppliers and distribution channels: Aparqa will continue the marketing of the application using government channels as well as social networks focused on the cities where it operates
4. High differentiation of some existing product: Aparqa will provide information in real time to the network.
5. Legal barriers: Aparqa will be up-to-date in the different city/state/country laws to provide a better service.

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There are 4 people working on the solution full time.

Aparqa’s team is a well-balanced team that allows us to work in a very efficient and rapid way.

The idea was originally brought up by Beatrice, our CEO.  She saw a need in the Traditional Retail Channel that nobody else was seeing because it was business as usual.  Beatrice combined her social concern with the economic one and came up with a solution that later on was Abaxto.

Beatrice Dellepiane is our CEO.  Beatrice is an expert in Business Administration with more than 20 years of experience in Distribution, Logistics, Business Management and corporate communication at a national and international level.  She is a graduated professional from ESAN who has work with Zilicom, JPF, BIM, Gloria.

Emilio Navarro is our CTO.  Emilio is a Computer Science Engineer, with more than 30 years of experience in Mobile apps, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Satellite Images and Facility Management. Graduated from Arizona State University.  Emilio has worked mostly in the US with companies such as Autodesk, Hitachi Software, DigitalGlobe, Grabert Systems.

We also have a Developer and a Graphics designer that have worked in another winning application called Abaxto (http://www.abaxto.com)

At this point we are not partnering with any organization, however, we are in talks with city halls in order to provide a better solution.

Aparqa is a SaaS / Transactional business model which is incredibly attractive as a service and payment method. Communities that do not want to invest large sums of capital in creating an IT infrastructure often use a SaaS solution, and that solution often becomes incredibly comprehensive for their systems. The SaaS business eliminates this risk for the customer who uses the service for their business, which generally only pays a small monthly or transactional fee.

Although there are many ways in which a SaaS business can make money, in general, the bread and butter of a SaaS business is the recurring income of its users. This membership fee, the transactional part, is what gives the customer access to the services and features of Aparqa.

The path to financial sustainability is done through our SaaS business model with a transactional revenue stream, however, there are other revenue streams that we will explore such as loyalty programs, geo-positional marketing (similar to what Waze provides) and big-data acquired from the usage of the application.  

We see solve as a worldwide stage for our startup as well as to publish what we are trying to provide for society, city and security of our users.  Solve is important to us because it will open the needed doors to potential partners as well as investing funds.  We seek to win our category even though we are a very young startup.  The value we derive is such that cities will become safer and they inhabitants will seek more functionality or solutions.

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We seek to partner with Federal, State and City Governments, insurance companies, telcos and social organizations in order to be able to advance our innovative solution for a better and safer city.

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We will use the prize to make a more robust solution and to attract more players to our solution to be able to provide a better and safer city.  It is important to show that even though cities grow faster than expected this type of solutions can provide the needed sense of security to maintain a healty and order city for all of its citizens no matter where they come from.

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