THE IRISH ‘AIRBNB for car parking’ has acquired one of its competitors as part of a push into continental Europe.
Parkpnp, which acts as a platform for people to lease their own car parking spaces, was set up in 2016 by Daniel Paul and Garret Flower – the co-founder of Dublin bakery business Krüst.
This week, the firm has announced the acquisition of Belgian online parking firm Sharemypark. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The deal represents Parkpnp second step into mainland Europe. Last year the startup announced plans to expand into the Netherlands as part of a multimillion-euro franchise agreement.
Belgian firm Sharemypark was launched in November 2016 and has attracted 10,000 ‘regular’ users. As part of the acquisition, Sharemypark will rebrand as Parkpnp SPRL.
Parkpnp CEO Flower said that moving into the Belgian market will give his company “the perfect launchpad to become the European market leader by 2020″.
Sharemypark co-founders Victor Boels, William Detry and Murat Turkeli are all due to join the Irish startup’s team. Boels said the firm opted to sell because “it doesn’t make sense for companies to become dragged into expensive turf wars”.
Since it was set up two years ago, Parkpnp has signed several deals with real estate, parking and hotel groups to add spaces to the platform’s network of car parking facilities.
Currently, the company is facilitating 100,000 users annually and has over 20,000 parking spaces listed across Europe, it said.
Parkpnp has raised €1.1 million in funding from a number of investors to date. One of the first backers of the company was Sean Melly’s venture capital firm Powerscourt Capital.
The company is still in the middle of raising its next funding round and has targeted a sum of between €3 million and €5 million, which will be used to bankroll its international expansion.
Speaking to Fora last year, Flower said that the franchise agreement in the Netherlands was worth about €1 million a year to Parkpnp. He added that his firm has been approached about similar franchise deals in Hungary and South Africa.
Written by Killian Woods and posted on Fora.ie
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