‘Technology and data are the key to adding value to assets’
The expansion strategy of ParkBee, the parking technology platform, has been influenced by changing traffic patterns after covid. Interview by Richard Betts.
Rutger Schuur, chief investment officer of ParkBee, discussess the parking technology platform’s expansion of its strategy, mobility in cities and the future of proptech.
What are you seeing in terms of demand in cities and metropolitan regions where mobility is an issue?
Over the past few years, we’ve seen quite fundamental changes to mobility in cities.
The big change in the mobility of the city that started about, say, 10 years ago with a lot of car-sharing companies entering the market, sped up last year, probably due to covid. Traffic is still not back to pre-pandemic levels, and it’s much more concentrated around a few days [a week].
We see that also in the use of offices, as many companies limit their employees to two or three days in the office. Some people, especially those who work for the big corporates, only go to the office once a week. For some reason, this is mostly on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so there’s a big concentration on those days. This leads to a lot of unused assets on the other days of the week.
Municipalities have also changed their policies, to get more cars off the street to facilitate mobility hubs and encourage car-sharing. Definitely, in the next few years, you will see a big shift in mobility in the big cities.
In terms of strategy, are you still aiming to grow across Europe and are you doing that through partnerships with cities?
About a year ago, ParkBee had around 400-450 locations. In the past year, we have grown to more than 600 locations in three countries: the Netherlands, the UK and Belgium. This year, we will probably expand to two more countries.
We already have a few partnerships lined up to enter new countries. We’re working on a pan-European network of parking locations.
That helps us in many ways, in particular to bring partner apps on board, or what we call front-end partner apps. They have user bases and if they can add to the services that they offer – to their tickets or their hotel rooms or apartments – if they can also add a parking spot nearby, because they have access to a dense network of parking options, that can be a great driver for new demand to those locations.
At ParkBee, there is a focus on sustainability, but also technology. There has been a huge expansion in the number of proptech companies, especially those focused on sustainability and solving some of those problems. How do you see that market at the moment?
Proptech experienced a big boost in the last five years, and projects developed in the past year were very interesting from a few angles.
As you know, funding options for tech or scale-up companies in proptech have been very bad, due to market dynamics. We are seeing a shake-out of that market on the one hand, but on the other hand, we are also seeing some start-ups growing to maturity and moving to a scale-up phase. This is a positive development, because they are here to stay.
However, the most important thing for companies in this market, where the availability of funding is limited, is that their economics are satisfactory or positive. This might help them to take the next step.
Some proptechs have grown to maturity, and a lot of those companies are here to stay. I think that is very interesting, because technology and data are the key to adding value to assets.
They can also be a big driver to make the built environment more sustainable.
What’s the next step for ParkBee?
Probably our next step is to expand the network across Europe by creating and growing our partnerships with real estate investors, as well as parking operators in leading cities.
We are already partnering with a number of municipalities and we are actively seeking to expand this and see how we can help them to make cities more liveable by getting cars off the street and creating more green space.
Richard Betts is group publisher of Real Asset Media
