App to fix parking pangs in northeast

Two young engineers of Assam are set to address the parking woes of car owners in and around Guwahati and other cities of the northeastern region with their mobile application.

The app, 'ParkingRhino', plans to manage both on-street and off-street parking in the state capital and other towns of Assam such as Jorhat, Dibrugarh, Tinsukia and Tezpur, by providing real-time information to drivers, its co-founder Tridib Konwar said.

"We have started our market research and lead generation for other northeastern states and plan to digitize more than 400 parking locations in the region through this platform," Konwar, who is also the CEO of the start-up, explained.

Bogged by inefficient system of parking vehicles in their work city Bengaluru, Konwar and his fellow Assam Engineering College alumini, Mriganka Deka, launched the app in 2016, but the focus shifted towards the North East after it secured seed funds from the 'Ideation' programme last year.

Assam-based Numaligarh Refinery Limited had launched 'Ideation' last year to promote start-ups in the northeast and selected ParkingRhino along with two other firms for funding their projects.

"The Ideation programme has encouraged us to launch our operation in Guwahati," Konwar said.

"We introduced smart technology for GMC (Guwahati Municipal Corporation) parking locations on Guwahati-Shillong Road and the Assam State Zoo. If everything works well, we will cover more than 50 parking locations in the region in the next three months," he said.

The major problem in the parking management system in the North East is keeping a track of manual tickets, he said.

"We want to digitize all locations using ParkingRhino management mobile application to ensure a transparent transaction for both citizens and the governments," Konwar said.

ParkingRhino is currently serving 15 cities in India along with two cities in Philippines, he said, adding that they have plans to launch the app in a few South-East Asian countries in the next six months.