Chinese shared parking startup Airparking receives millions in RMB of Pre-A Round

Chinese shared parking startup Airparking announced the recent completion of their Pre-Series A round financing worth about millions in RMB. This was an exclusive funding from SAIF Partners and the registration of industrial and commercial changes were done as well. This is the second round of financing for Airparking since their last funding from an angel investor in June last year, which is also worth millions in RMB.

Airparking was established in Guangzhou in July of 2015. The company also brought their product services online in September the same year, and is dedicated to providing Internet parking services. By following the idea of the sharing economy, Airparking is making full use of empty parking spaces to optimize operational efficiency and user experience, reduce management costs, and mitigate the problem of parking within cities.

Airparking provides shared parking services by creating an online platform with a combination of parking and the Internet—the Airparking app. This creates a win-win situation for real estate companies, car owners, and property owners altogether. The Airparking app offers many useful functions including the ability to reserve parking spaces in just 3 seconds, smart deduction, and credit payment, etc. At present, the app is available throughout ten different cities in China including Guangzhou, Wuhan, Qingdao, Suzhou and Changsha, etc. Airparking has also established strategic partnerships with many big companies such as China Overseas Property Holdings Ltd., Poly Group Corporation, Yuexiu Group Ltd., Guangzhou Yuehua Property Co. Ltd., etc. Currently, Airparking has over 1,000 contracted projects with multiple companies, and has over 400,000 parking spaces. Furthermore, Airparking has developed strategic partnerships with banks such as the China Construction Bank, Ping An Bank and the China Everbright Bank, and have also engaged in business cooperation with WeChat and Alipay.

Mr. Feng Zhideng, the CEO of Airparking announced that the current round of financing will mainly be used to accelerate the development of smart parking and to expand the Airparking app’s usage nationally. He told 36Kr, “after two years of development, Airparking has formed a standardized operating system and a business model, and has formed highly efficient operations team.”

Mr. Yan Yan, chief partner of the hedge fund (SAIF Partners) stated: Airparking’s idea of shared parking aligns well with the Chinese developmental concept of “sharing” and encourages parking and mutual assistance between neighbors. This can drastically raise the efficiency of social resource utilization and mitigate the problem of urban parking. With the rapid increase in the number of cars and of parking spaces, the demand for parking spaces are blazingly high, and the market capacity and outlook is promising. At present, SAIF Partners’ offices in China and India has a total management value of nearly 6 billion in RMB and 400 million in USD, and the financing company has also invested in WUBA Tongcheng(58 同城), Shanda Group（盛大） and Zhihu（知乎）

This article by Nicholas originally appeared in 36kr and was translated by Pandaily.

Click here to read the original Chinese article.