App to made available in Tel Aviv
Photo: Moti Kimchi
Parking finder wins app contest
Parko, a user-driven cell phone app that seeks out empty parking spots, wins the Israel Mobile Challenge
Parko, the startup behind a crowdsourcing app of the same name that aims to help drivers locate parking, has won the Israel Mobile Challenge, a competition aiming to promote technological innovation in the smart phone arena.
The contest, which was sponsored by the Ben Gurion University, Google and Motorala, among others, was judged by Noam Bardin, the CEO of Waze, the revolutionary GPS app.
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Parko defeated 80 other startups and app developers to win the challenge. The achievement means that Parko could become the next big thing in the mobile app world.
According to the company, statistics show that the average driver will spend almost a year of his life searching for parking.
As Tel Aviv residents who face the challenge of searching for parking on a daily basis, the five young founders of Parko decided to devise a solution – in the form of an user-driven service that automatically finds available parking spots that have been reported by other drivers.
The app incentivizes drivers to share the locations of parking spots they have just vacated with prizes, coupons and even cash – as well as the promise that next time, they won't have to spend the better part of an evening searching for an empty stretch of curb.
Parko uses unique technology that was developed by the startup, employing no less than nine sensors already installed in the average smart phone.
The service is to be made available to drivers in Tel Aviv later this summer, and is expected to expand to large cities worldwide.
