Smart parking technology developer Japa Inc. is in the midst of raising a $10 million round of funding to grow the company.
It is seeking the money to expand the company’s customers nationwide, said CEO Mathew Magno.
“We’re making good headway, and we have had no churn,” he said.
No churn means that all the customers that have signed up for Japa are still Japa customers, he said.
Japa’s hardware is a sensor puck installed on parking spaces that senses whether the space is occupied. The software allows parking operators to have real-time analytics of every parking space, and it also offers historical analytics to find trends.
Using the Japa app, drivers can find open parking spaces, and the app will tell them when their time is going to expire.
The company's largest deployment of pucks is underway, about 5,000 of them at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.
In 2020, Japa installed 2,000 of its parking sensors at the University of California Berkeley. It has since gone on to install its technology on the campuses of the University of California Davis, University of California Santa Barbara and California State Polytechnic University Pomona.
It recently installed them on the seven surface lots of UC Davis Medical Center, with an engagement to install its technology on the four parking garages of the regional medical center and research hospital. When completed, Japa will have installed 5,000 sensors at the medical center.
Japa was also the winner on Aug. 30 of 10 finalists selected for the Sacramento regional pitch competition for the Startup World Cup.
Japa will now move to the semifinals at the end of this month, where the final winner gets a $1 million investment.
“We’re very proud to represent Sacramento in the contest,” Magno said.
The Startup World Cup isn’t Japa’s first contest.
Japa has won first-place prizes at both the UC Davis Big Bang! Business Competition and the Sacramento Kings Capitalize contest
Magno co-founded Japa in 2017 with Charles Chen, now chief technology officer, as a class project when they were both students at UC Davis. The company developed an app designed to help businesses, universities and cities manage their parking assets, while providing drivers with a mobile application that lets them know where to find an empty parking space. The app is used in conjunction with a battery-powered plastic puck sensor, which is installed in parking spaces to relay data to building owners and drivers.
