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The NRMA (National Roads and Motorists’ Association) has announced a significant investment in Divvy Parking, the startup opening up parking spaces in commercial office towers to commuters.
The investment will be used to assist in Divvy’s three-year plan, which includes fast-tracking the company’s technology platform and product both in Australia and internationally.
“NRMA is the biggest motorist representative in Australia. What they were looking for is technology that’s going to bring real value to their members,” says Divvy founder, Nick Austin. “Technology that’s leading the way in areas where there is room for significant improvement.”
Divvy connects commuters with underutilised parking spaces in commercial property buildings around the CBD, and currently has partnerships with major commercial property groups including DEXUS, GPT Group and Knight Frank who use the solution to help manage and improve the yield on their portfolio of parking assets.
“The key benefits to Divvy is being able dealing with your underutilised space. That’s what most property owners want to see. Secondly, the data that’s captured. There is a lot of inaccurate and untimely data collected around parking. From a facility manager’s point of view, the ability to capture valuable data allows you to craft better services. Thirdly, the compliance. Swipe cards are riddled with issues – they can be handed to other people, they aren’t really traceable. Our system allows a mobile phone to become the access device, which means the booking needs to be attached to that phone, which is attached to a credit card. This gives you full visibility and gives you a good handle on what’s going on in your carpark,” Autin says.
“We had been in discussion with NRMA for several months around our plan, our technology, our team, and based around that, they selected Divvy as being a top innovative and advanced technology solution in the country.”
The investment is aimed at helping Divvy to break into the current parking duopoly, run by Wilson and Secure.
“Technology is driving much better flexibility in the way our buildings are used. Not just in terms of parking, but also meeting rooms, lockers, all sorts of things that are currently not being used as best as they could be because of a lack of transparency, not a great payment system, or whatever it may be. So we see that changing, and this is all largely because tenants and workspaces are changing a lot. People want their workplaces to be flexible and agile, and you need a building that has that intelligence to allow that to happen.”
