Sharing his insights on defining creativity, Vivek Mehra, Founder & CEO at ParqEx implies, “Creativity is one’s ability to find new solutions to complex problems and challenges. When you’re creative, you can connect the dots in different ways and see things from different perspectives. This means you’re less likely to become stuck because you don’t have to follow the same linear thinking processes that aren’t always effective.”
Since his preliminary days, Vivek was passionate about building technology solutions and till date that drive has remained unchanged. With valuable experience, the decision maker of ParqEx has grown into the business side of the equation, but the technological inclination has been there from the start.
In April 2014, Vivek founded ParqEx as a response to the impending problem of unavailability of parking space in Chicago. Personally having being frustrated of searching for parking all the time or else paying exorbitant prices for it, the Founder & CEO ParqEx identified a favourable opportunity of utilizing the privately-owned empty spaces in rather a fruitful manner. In this day and age, it just made sense to Vivek that technology could provide a unique solution.
However, without experiencing certain pitfalls and hurdles, success does not taste honey sweet. Initially, the biggest challenge that Vivek faced was managing capital while trying to grow revenue every month. He achieved this herculean task through a combination of creativity, whereby he found as many cheap growth hacking ideas as possible, along with perseverance of pushing forward no matter how many obstacles arose. In spite of limited resources at hand, in 2016, ParqEx generated its revenue up to 32% month-over-month besides accepting two separate accelerator programs namely gener8tor out of Milwaukee and Elmspring out of Chicago.
On that premise, overextension led to the second noteworthy challenge which Vivek had to skillfully overcome. Attending two accelerators at the same time meant that the team of ParqEx had to stretch, especially while trying to run and grow the business at the same time. However, initially identifying the worth of the expected outcome, Vivek and his team pulled together through those months and emerged victoriously. Thankfully, his faith was rewarded in terms of raising ParqEx seed funding, which was oversubscribed and closed at over $1.3MM.
ParqEx: Distinctive Private Parking Technology Platform
Headquartered in Chicago, IL, ParqEx’s marketplace enables non-commercial parking owners such as residential, non-profit and business parking spots to rent their underutilized parking spots to drivers on an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis. For parking spots secured behind gates/garage doors, ParqEx’s Access along with technology lets owners grant controlled access to their secured parking spots through the convenience of the ParqEx app.
Property owners and managers use this proprietary technology to increase the value of their parking spaces that are often underutilized and/or difficult to manage. This unique platform offers a set of modular solutions that can be implemented on their own or packaged together depending on the needs of a given customer or property.
Exclusive Offerings by ParqEx
Following three key solutions are offered by the techno-savvy, private parking technology platform.
- Marketplace: It provides property owners with the ability to increase income by facilitating rentals to drivers looking for a place to park. The owners set the availability & price, and ParqEx team handles the rest.
- Access: This solution offers a better way to provide access to secure parking locations by controlling doors and gates through the ParqEx mobile app. When compared with traditional opening methods such as fobs and clickers, this proprietary IoT technology solution is inexpensive to install, saves operating costs, and reduces management hassle.
- GuestParq: This plug-and-play offering has been designed primarily for apartment and condominium buildings, improving the guest parking experience for residents, guests, and managers alike. It also enhances the entire process, right from reserving a spot, to arriving at the building to managing who should be parking in which spot.
Instrumental Role in Driving ParqEx towards Success
With 18+ years of experience in technical leadership and an outstanding track record of creating technology vision, setting strategic IT direction, and steering innovative technology road-maps to align with corporate strategy and business objectives, Vivek has truly set a high benchmark for his team as well as other entrepreneurs. This refined mindset has been obtained through vast experience of working with larger companies coupled with running smaller companies. In addition to this, a healthy mix of hard work, self-belief in abilities, and good luck has immensely helped Vivek to arrive at this juncture.
Setting High Standards
Today, none of ParqEx’s competitors have dedicated to providing a full suite of solutions specifically for self-managed parking like it has. In addition, a key innovation that differentiates the leading parking solution provider is its Access service. Using this unique IoT solution, with little to no investment required, ParqEx augments the capabilities of a property like no other company to increase revenue opportunities, reduce costs, along with guest parking amenities to tenants.
Taking a Closer Look at the Creativity Gap
The Founder and CEO of ParqEx doesn’t believe that there is a creativity gap between the old and young generation. Every generation has creativity that they apply in their own ways based on their knowledge & experiences; some use technology while others use business acumen to find creative solutions for problems. He also believes that technology is responsible for influencing the solution each generation comes up with, but that doesn’t mean one is less or more creative than the other.
