Parchive is committed to helping Nigerians eliminate car parking stress

Parchive App, a first of its kind technology-driven innovation, is revolutionizing the parking industry, simply by helping Nigerians search, reserve, and pay for parking space since its inception in 2020.

Speaking on the motivation behind the initiative, Parchive’s Chief Executive Officer, Oluyinka Oginni, said that the difficulty he experienced in securing a parking space when he visited Computer Village, Ikeja, Lagos, prompted his decision to proffer a solution. According to Oginni, I frequently visit Computer Village in Ikeja, Lagos to get technology gadgets. During one of my trips in August 2018, I drove to my usual parking spot, but on arrival, it was completely occupied.

“I spent over 30 minutes searching the area in a bid to locate a parking spot to no avail. I eventually got stuck in traffic and finally had to go back to the previous car park I visited before finding an open spot to park. This frustration led to in-depth research to find a solution to reserving a parking spot before getting to his destination”.

Oginni further said, “in August 2018 I took time conducting research on the best solution to resolving the parking menace in Lagos and if there was currently a solution in the market. We also carried out a market survey to ensure that this was a solution users actually wanted and its results revealed an overwhelmingly positive response to the idea and highlighted the potential benefits users saw with the solution.

Before the end of 2018, I assembled a team to develop the product and I was actively involved in ensuring we got to the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage. However, I and my team still had our individual full-time jobs, and that meant we could not fully dedicate adequate resources to launch the product once it got to the MVP stage. In 2020, the team decided to dedicate all our time to complete and launch the product.”

Continuing, Oginni said that Parchive’s main goal is to ensure people conveniently drive their cars in Nigeria without the struggle of finding a place to park. Since its launch in October 2020, over 1000 parking transactions have been completed on the platform despite the fact that some people now work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Furthermore, as part of measures to eliminate transactional and financial monitoring bottlenecks for car park operators, Parchive introduced cashless transactions as a gamechanger in an industry notorious for physical cash payments. Current car park operators on the platform can easily withdraw their earnings directly into their bank accounts, further driving digital transactions in the economy.

On the company’s long-term plan, he said, “five years from now, Parchive would have expanded to the rest of Africa. We designed the application with potential users across the continent in mind ensuring that anyone with a smartphone/device can easily download the app on Google Play store or use our WebApp for IOS users, create an account, type their destination in the search bar, view car parks closest to that location, and easily reserve a parking spot. We were also excited to see that over 60% of our customers are women, with use cases ranging from paying for parking at their workplaces to making reservations when they visit the market.”