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Exclusive: Get My Parking to raise fresh funds at 90% valuation surge

EntrackrEntrackr · 28d ago
Exclusive: Get My Parking to raise fresh funds at 90% valuation surge
Medial

Exclusive: Get My Parking to raise fresh funds at 90% valuation surge AI-based parking management system Get My Parking is all set to raise Rs 21.6 crore (approximately $2.5 million) in an extended Series A round led by existing investor IvyCap Ventures with participation from Legacy Assets LLP and others. This funding comes four years after Get My Parking raised $6 million in its Series A round in May 2021, led by IvyCap Ventures. The company’s board passed a resolution to issue 3,923 Series A2 compulsory convertible preference shares at an issue price of Rs 55,088 apiece to raise Rs 21.6 crore, according to its filing with the Registrar of Companies (RoC). Existing investor IvyCap will be leading the round with Rs 13 crore investment followed by Legacy Assets’ Rs 3 crore. The rest of the amount will be contributed by Manish Kohli, The Sarvasva Trust, and 7 other individual investors. The funds raised will be used to meet general business needs, including working capital requirements and expansion plans, the filing added. According to Entrackr’s estimates, Get My Parking’s valuation is expected to rise by nearly 90% to Rs 335 crore (approximately $39 million) post-allotment, up from Rs 177 crore during its previous $6 million funding round. Founded in 2015 by Chirag Jain and Rasik Pansare, Get My Parking offers smart parking solutions using IoT technology, enabling operators to digitize their parking spaces and manage them efficiently with features like automated entry, digital payments, and live availability updates. According to startup data intelligence platform TheKredible, the Bengaluru-based company has raised over $10 million since its inception. IvyCap Ventures is the largest external stakeholder with a 15.87% stake, followed by Europe’s leading parking operator, APCOA, which holds a 12% stake. Get My Parking reported over 50% growth in operating revenue to Rs 29.4 crore in the fiscal year ending March 2024, while reducing its losses by 57% to Rs 6.5 crore during the same period. Get My Parking competes with the Peak XV-backed Park+ which posted Rs 131 crore revenue in FY24. The company also competes with Parky, Park Smart, among others.

Return Prime aims to make return management seamless for brands

EntrackrEntrackr · 1y ago
Return Prime aims to make return management seamless for brands
Medial

Bengaluru-based Return Prime provides a customer return platform which includes a business dashboard for managing returns. The company aims to make it easier for brands, specially smaller ones, to use its services through a plug-and-play model. Beyond basic returns, brands can use the Return Prime platform for automating return logistics, refunds, replacements, and more. We spoke to founder and CEO Shashwat Swaroop to learn more about Return Prime, what distinguishes it from the competition and the roadmap ahead. Here are the edited excerpts: How did you come up with this idea? I have always been extremely passionate about creating something and solving problems, building my brand which helped other people solve their challenges was always something that I intended to do. Once an eCommerce brand came to me with their return management nightmare. They were doing everything manually and it was too cumbersome. It was not only time-consuming but was impacting their customer experience too. Customers were used to a certain speed, standards, and experience, and to ensure their shoppers wouldn’t leave them, they needed a solution to cater to this. But building a whole software program was just out of reach – both financially and in terms of time! I then began researching, and my study confirmed what I suspected – there was a massive gap in the market for managing returns. Existing solutions were few and far between, and mostly focused on the US. We saw a chance to empower brands worldwide to make return management extremely seamless, one that ensures their GMV losses are minimized while customer experience is maximized, that’s what led to the birth of Return Prime. Please help understand how you generate revenues. The pricing models are quite fair and simple. This was one of the most important things for us to simplify. When we started building Return Prime, we were simplifying the complicated experience of returns for both brands and their customers so keeping everything around Return Prime simple was important. The pricing model is just based on the scale of business which is how many returns they do in a given month. One can start with the Free Forever plan if they are a small brand and pay nothing forever. They only have to choose a paid plan when they start to grow. As you grow, you can choose one of our Grow plans which starts at $9.99 a month. What are the key challenges in the industry that have not been addressed yet? And how do you plan to address this? We are working to solve the way businesses see returns. The correct solution is not to focus on reducing the returns but on figuring out how you can turn your returns into a revenue-making opportunity. Returns are simply inevitable so the merit is not in reducing it by another few per cent but in converting the majority of it into additional revenue. We are constantly working on it and on average, our brands see an ROI of 183%+ with Return Prime, which is on the cost they pay for Return Prime every month. This is going up constantly with our focused effort to turn returns into revenue. How has your startup performed since its inception? Please share statistics. We have been growing from day 1, completely bootstrapped. We grew 150% YoY in the last 3 years and this is not just India, across the globe. We serve merchants in 100+ countries today and our market share across these countries continues to increase every year. In the last 3 years, we have processed over 12 million returns for brands and customers globally. What are your short-term and long-term goals in terms of product and business expansion and diversification? From a product expansion point of view, we are focused on increasing the ROI for our brands as we believe in keeping strong fundamentals. While we do this, we will continue to increase our market share across other regions as well along with India. As consumer behaviour evolves, we are also trying to help brands offer Omnichannel returns experiences to their customers making it super easy and delightful for them. This not only helps the customer but also increases the repeat purchase and LTV for brands as this customer will trust them even more. On the other hand, we are also trying to help bigger brands solve more complex operational problems and policies which now with Return Prime is just a matter of click. We will continue to simplify complexities as we grow along with brands. In terms of geographical expansion, we will go deeper into some of the regions and increase our market share while we continue to turn returns into revenue for the rest of the world.

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