Rafat Rahman is the Founder and CEO of Parking Koi. Parking Koi is a parking spaces marketplace that connects people with unused parking spaces, helping people to find parking spaces easily as well as helping owners to rent their parking spaces when they are not using it. The company currently operates in Dhaka and Chattogram.
We recently caught up with Mr. Rafat, to learn about his journey to entrepreneurship, how Parking Koi got started, what is Parking Koi and how it operates, the state of Parking Koi’s business today, its ambition going forward, the lessons he has learned from his journey so far and much more.
Future Startup
Could you please tell us about your background and what you are working on now?
Rafat Rahman
I have been living in the US for the last 12 years and have worked in Fortune 500 companies like HP, Intel, and Bank of America. Currently, I’m working as a Senior Systems Engineer in the largest insurance company in America.
Finding a parking space is a problem that people undergo in almost every metropolitan cities. I found out that the problem is equally prominent in Dhaka because there are not enough parking spaces. The consequence is horrendous traffic conditions due to abrupt parking. That’s what motivated me to create a platform to help people find parking spaces in Dhaka.
Future Startup
Could you please elaborate your path to entrepreneurship?
Rafat Rahman
I come from a solid technology background. I have been lucky to have the opportunity to work with all kinds of latest cutting edge technologies. In the last few years, I tried to solve some real problem in Bangladesh through technology. That's why I started Task Heroes a service platform in 2018. Task Heroes did not go far and eventually failed but I’ve learned a lot from that failure and applied some of those lessons in parking Koi. That’s why when it came to Parking Koi, we took it slow and steady. It took us two years to launch ParKing Koi, which is now the largest parking sharing platform in Bangladesh.
Future Startup
When and how did get started with Parking Koi? What motivated you to start Parking Koi? Why did you start a business in this sector?
Rafat Rahman
As I mentioned earlier, finding a parking space is a challenge in almost every metropolitan cities. In Dhaka, this is even greater a problem that exacerbates the already worst traffic congestion in the city. Abrupt parking is one of the big reasons behind the traffic in Dhaka. That’s basically why I decided to try and solve this problem. We thought this is a difficult problem and there is a need for a solution to this.
Future Startup
What went into building the initial operation of Parking Koi? How did you put together initial investment and other things to get started? Please walk us through what the first few months of your journey were like and the challenges you faced.
Rafat Rahman
Parking Koi app was launched on April 1, 2018. We applied for GP Accelerator the same month and got selected for the program. Going through the program was very helpful. We received assistance in commercializing the app and mentoring on customer dealing, designing the financials and so on. Later we also became one of the top 10 teams in Seedstar Growth programme and received seed funding from GPA and Seedstar Switzerland.
Parking Koi has 3 founding members. We consider Parking Koi an IT company first and then a parking solution platform. Currently, we are a team of 31 people. We have our own technology team and are solving problems for our users every day.
We currently operate in Dhaka and Chattogram. We have six operational division in Dhaka city and the operation team is working to source parking spaces across the city. We are also trying to collaborate with the owners of shopping malls and multi-storied buildings to utilize their parking spaces.
Future Startup
Could you please give us an overview of Parking Koi in terms of services you offer, the size of your business, number of users, how your operation works, etc?
Rafat Rahman
We have Android App, iOS app and parking koi website through which our users could avail our services. We are currently operating in Dhaka and Chittagong. We have 40 thousand active users. Our daily average transaction is 700 to 800 with 50% recurring customers.
Future Startup
On average how many customers you serve per month? How have you attracted customers and grown Parking Koi? Could you tell us about strategies and activities that you carried out to achieve the growth?
Rafat Rahman
In the first quarter(January to March) of this year, we completed 26000 parking and this second quarter (April to June) we completed almost 70000 parking. That means we are growing almost 150% quarter to quarter. We are onboarding new parking hub every month which is helping us to grow our business at this rate
Future Startup
What is your business model? How have you grown your revenue?
Rafat Rahman
Our business model is simple. We have hourly and monthly parking rate. Hourly rate starts from 15 taka and monthly starts from 2500 taka.
ParkingKoi is a two-sided marketplace which means we not only help people to find parking spaces, we are also helping people to rent their parking spaces when they are not using it. Some of our hosts earn more than 200,000 taka every month
Future Startup
Have you raised any investment?
Rafat Rahman
We raised about $100,000 and are in the process of raising another $400000.
Future Startup
What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced? What are the challenges now?
Rafat Rahman
Entrepreneurship is a challenging affair. Building a startup is difficult. Making a startup profitable, scalable and maintaining the service standard is a daily challenge. Moreover, at Parking Koi, we deal with a sensitive asset which is cars. Ensuring security is a challenge. Fortunately, our team has been able to ensure more than 150,000 safe parking without any occurrence. The team faced difficulties to make people understand the concept of getting parking space through the app.
Future Startup
How does your sales and marketing work?
Rafat Rahman
We are using social media to generate leads and then our sales team reach out to these leads and finalize the sale.
Future Startup
What are the goals for the future?
Rafat Rahman
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 in Bangladesh. This is a huge challenge.
We plan 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 the Bangladeshi context with trial and error. We started with a profit-sharing model and we are constantly working on business model innovation find a better model for us. Parking Koi wants to encourage people to use paid parking space through discounts.
Future Startup
What are some lessons you’ve learned?
Rafat Rahman
Be ready to learn from your mistakes and use those lessons to avoid big ones.
Future Startup
Have you found anything particularly helpful or advantageous in the process of building Parking Koi?
Rafat Rahman
We are building ParkingKoi as a team. Empowering your team members is important because when you empower your team they own the problems and challenges as much as you own as a founder. Startup is like a sport, there might be a captain but end of the day you can only win if you play as a team.
Future Startup
How do you deal with challenges and stress that come with being a founder?
Rafat Rahman
Being a founder is always challenging. Since I run the company from 8000 miles away, for me it's more challenging. What I have found useful is staying calm and keeping your head cool. There will be problems. That is given. How we respond to the problems that present them to us is the main thing.
Future Startup
What advice would you give to founders who are just starting out?
Rafat Rahman
Be patient and do the hard work.
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