In a city where it's often difficult to find a parking spot, the market for parking apps feels just as crowded.
ParkWhiz announced today that it has raised $10 million in a Series B funding round led by Chicago Investment Firm Jump Capital. The funding will allow ParkWhiz to triple its staff to 75 and put its technology inside vehicle infotainment systems like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, according to Blue Sky. The ParkWhiz app lets you search for your destination and see available parking spots near you. It shows the location and price of each spot and allows you to prepay for the parking spot from your phone. Launched in 2006, ParkWhiz is based in Chicago and is in more than 150 cities across the U.S.
The funding announcement comes a month after competing Chicago-based parking app SpotHero announced it had raised $4.5 million in funding. SpotHero launched in 2011 and is in seven U.S. cities.
Parking Panda, a Baltimore-based app that launched in 2011, has a strong presence in Chicago and partnered with this year's Gay Pride Parade to help people find parking spots before the festivities.
While technically not direct competitors to ParkWhiz, SpotHero and Parking Panda, another parking option for app-savvy drivers is the city's ParkChicago app, which is a convenient way to pay for metered street parking from your phone. But the app has recently come under fire for incorrectly issuing tickets to people who had appropriately paid for parking.
And if paying for parking isn't your thing, Meter Beaters was introduced into the Apple App Store in June and will supposedly find you free parking in 14 different Chicago neighborhoods.
With so many options for finding parking in Chicago, the funding for ParkWhiz is a vote of confidence for the app, which is the elder statesman of the crew. The Illinois Parking Institute said the U.S. parking market is a $25-$30 billion industry with more than 105 million commercial parking spaces and 5 million parking meters in the country.
