The problem Parke solves

• Not only is driving loved around the world but also hated for the lack of proper parking spaces. All of us at some point have felt the need for a regulated and centralized parking management system while driving. Finding a parking spot takes away huge chunk of our time.On reaching we find it full else comes the long waiting until cars are rearranged to create bumper to bumper spaces with unreasonable rates.Making parking a tiring, tedious work with your vehicle susceptible to regular paint damages if not dents. In addition to that, many spots have a disclaimer stating that parking is at owner’s risk
• Buying you time, we bring a hassle free experience at the ease of your fingertips. Search for spots around you, select the spot which best suits your needs. We guide you through the fastest route, on reaching, the space is all yours. It is as simple as that! Your vehicle is safe with our advanced safety and security measures in every verified parking spot. Fixed number of parking spots make sure every car has ample padding spaces
• One can apply for hosting their space on Parkè.After we verify, it can be up and provide them earning from this space
• Unregulated parking practices is an unavoidable part of our daily lives. No proper receipts, charging more than the rate and so on. At present date, there are no measures to monitor and stop the suspicious middle men and their questionable practices. Parkè ensures a convenient and cashless way to counter these issues by conducting transactions directly between customers and Parkè without involving any 3rd party

Expansion plans

• To provide premium memberships enabling access to exclusive parking lounges with services and features such as EV charging ports, car washes, servicing, repair and maintenance options and accessory outlets. Setting up EV charging infrastructures throughout could be a major push to see more EV vehicles on the road and pave a road to a safer and cleaner future
• Blockchain integration for payment

Challenges we ran into

Scalability

• In the backend, our biggest challenge was to choose the appropriate database for our use case, because database is one of the most important things in an internet based startup. We chose MongoDB, as it is highly scalable for a huge user base.
  Another issue we faced was regarding the fetching and showing of the nearest parking spots to our customers. Our 1st plan was to fetch all the data and find the distance between those coordinates and the customer's current location, but that was taking too much time. On further research, we implemented the same by tweaking a bit of MongoDB's GeoSpatial features
• For the database, we have different tables for storing the customer and partner data. If it would have been in the same table then fetching the data for a particular entity would be more resource intensive as it would have to search longer. It will also be easier to analyse the data while doing some business scaling

Space

• With respect to the storage of varieties of vehicles like bikes, hatchbacks, etc, the problem we faced was with the absolute spaces the vehicles take. Since the bikes, hatchbacks, etc do not have a definite size comparative ratio the only option was to physically go and check the parking spaces, which would be a drain of revenue from a business perspective. Therefore we came up with a solution of keeping the space constant for all vehicles as done in public parking spots

Safety

• As Safety is our highest concern, in order to validate the RC of the vehicle of the customer we are using our own custom API which checks the details from a trusted source and verifies the car

Ease

• Slack time of 10 mins is given between booking and reaching to prevent chaos at parking spot
• It could have been a common issue of traffic congestion if right after the spot became empty, it would show in the vicinity. To check this we have kept a 30 mins cooldown for a smooth traffic flow

Optimisation

• Caching local data to prevent repeated fetches