This Entrepreneur Kept Unwinding Strategies Unless He Nailed His First Customer Acquiring your competitor on the grounds of technological innovation is a brave step towards growth. This untrodden road was taken by Get My Parking's Rasik Pansare post several challenges to nail his first major project.
By Anindita Ganguly Edited by Punita Sabharwal
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A Thorny Route
Ten months into the business, the company had already met with several glitches. However, the worst was yet to come! After being rejected by many corporate clients due to lack of expertise, Pansare tried to change his tactic, he says, "We felt a need to educate our customers about the technology. We saw an opportunity during Ujjain Maha Kumbh Mela in 2016 where we could play a role in transforming the traditional parking system into a smart one." He first approached the state department and tried convincing them to issue a smart parking tender. "It took an entire day to make them understand its necessity. Later, we met the local administration to get to know the area well," shares Pansare adding, "Despite the efforts, we lost the bid."
Way Around
The rejection made Pansare so desperate that the very next day he met the head of the agency that had won the tender. "We had nothing to lose. So, I frankly told him that they did not have the required technology to manage such a massive crowd. Instead of operating manually, they could use our technology and the mobile app. Besides, we also offered our full support," remarks Pansare. This led to a technological partnership for the grand event. Though the project was undertaken by their competitor, the core technology was Pansare's. "We knew our technology has the ability to drive the event in a never-seen-before way. What was done manually till then would see a digital transformation through our app. Two days later, though officially we lost the contract but won our biggest parking project!" he exclaims.
Destination Covered
After this successful stunt, while Pansare was busy strategizing their growth, Twitter notified them about Narendra Modi's statement on the urgency of smart parking, which gave them the required mileage. He expresses, "PM congratulated us for successfully conducting Kumbh Mela while stating the urgency of this technology. This gave us the required push." Meanwhile, those corporate companies which initially had denied to use their technology gradually joined hands. Now, they have over 85,000 car spaces at 300 locations in India along with major IPL customers to big shot corporates. Today, Get My Parking is solving space crunches across the globe and is growing four fold.
(This article was first published in the July 2018 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. To subscribe, click here)
