Starting a new Business. Business Model, marketing and financial planning for "parkitch"

Table of contents

I Abbreviations

II List of Tables

III List of Figures

1 Executive Summary

2 Service
2.1 Service Description
2.2 Customer Benefits
2.3 First Mover Advantage
2.4 Development App and Website

3 Market and Competition
3.1 Sector and Overall Market Analysis
3.2 Market Segments and Target Customers
3.3 Competition Analysis/Observation

4 Business Model
4.1 The Business Model
4.2 Management and Key Positions
4.3 Staff
4.4 Milestone Planning

5 Marketing and Distribution
5.1 Pricing
5.2 Distribution Concept
5.3 Communication Measures
5.4 Market Entry Strategy

6 Opportunities and Threats

7 Financial planning
7.1 Profitability planning
7.2 Investment Planning
7.3 Liquidity planning
7.4 Capital requirements and financing
7.5 Company Value

IV Bibliography

V Appendix

I Abbreviations

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

II List of Tables

Table 1: Overview of user segments in parking

Table 2: Overview of the relevant assessment of the user segments in a private transport (1/2)

Table 3: Overview of the relevant assessment of the user segments in a private transport (2/2)

Table 4: Overview of the relevant assessment of the user segments in commercial transport

Table 5: Overview of the market participants

Table 6: 5-year staff planning

Table 7: Strengths and Weaknesses

Table 8: Opportunities and threats

Table 9: 1. Worst Case premises

Table 10: Worst Case P & L FC

Table 11: 2. Balanced Case premises

Table 12: Balanced Case P & L FC

Table 13: 3. Best Case premises

Table 14: Best Case P & L FC

Table 15: 5 Year Investment Planning

Table 16: Overview Funding

Table 17: Formula for calculating liquidity

Table 18: Liquidity planning Y1: Worst Case

Table 19: Liquidity planning Y2-Y5: Worst Case

Table 20: Liquidity planning Y1: Balanced Case

Table 21: Liquidity planning Y2-Y5: Balanced Case

Table 22: Liquidity planning Y1: Best Case

Table 23: Liquidity planning Y2-Y5: Best Case

Table 24: Discounted Cash Flow Valuation: Worst Case

Table 25: Discounted Cash Flow Valuation: Balanced Case

Table 26: Discounted Cash Flow Valuation: Best Case

Table 27: ITM-Checklist (1/2)

Table 28: ITM-Checklist (2/2)

III List of Figures

Figure 1: Overview German "On-Street" Parking Market

Figure 2: Organigram parkitch

Figure 3: Milestone Planning

Figure 4: Opportunities and Threats + Strengths and Weaknesses = Strategic Fields of Action

Figure 5: Overview 5-year KPI development: Worst Case

Figure 6: Overview 5-year KPI development: Balanced Case

Figure 7: Overview 5-year KPI development: Best Case

Figure 8: Course of cumulative liquidity Y1-Y5

1 Executive Summary

parkitch is the new solution for parking dilemmas.

All over the world, people in big cities waste vast amounts of time and money looking for a parking space. In addition to time and money, groaning for a free parking space is also nerve­wracking and environmentally harmful. parkitch solves this problem. For this purpose, we are creating a closed system that makes it possible to find free parking spaces. Users can pass on their vacant parking space to another user. Free parking spaces can be reserved according to the user's needs. parkitch thus shifts the annoying search for a parking space to the online world, automating the search for a parking space at a specific place and time.

With our solution, we are setting new standards in the field of "autonomous" and "predictive parking" and are thus one step closer to a fully connected automotive industry. parcitch generates revenue in three ways: a premium app subscription, in-app purchases and as an advertising platform. The market focus is on unmanaged on-street parking, which is home to numerous user segments in private and commercial traffic. The estimated market volume in Germany alone far exceeds billions.

We, the founding team, the two millennials Felix, and Jay, have gained profound experience in software programming, business modelling and data-driven marketing. Felix currently works at one of Germany's leading restructuring consultancies and Joy at the world's leading IT consul­tancy. As a team, our strengths complement each other perfectly. Our vision is now to become the leading provider in the field of predictive and autonomous parking. Our mission is to connect space.

Our capital requirements are between 140 and 325 kEUR. We will be profitable in the 4th year at the latest.

2 Service

2.1 Service Description

Parkitch is an app that simplifies the search for free car parking spaces in large cities. The app makes it possible to find parking spaces that will become available in the future. As a user, you can participate in the parkitch system via two interlinked ways.

User A

User A has already parked his car in a free parking space and plans to release it again at an appropriate time and drive away. User A sets in the parkitch app when the parking space will be released again.

User B

User B is looking for a parking space in a certain area for a certain period. The user is not cur­rently looking for a parking space while driving but knows he needs a slot soon.

Example

Max has parked his car in Hamburg in the Ottensen district near his flat in a public and free car park. Max knows that he is going to the gym today at 4:30 p.m. and enters this into the parkitch app. Through tracking, the app knows where Max parked his car. Max sees whether the tracking worked on the map in his app and confirms his available park­ing space. Once this has been done, the parking space is shown to other users in the app.

Lotti knows how hard it is to find a parking space in Ottensen. She does not feel like searching for ages. Lotti also knows that she will have to look for a parking space in front of her flat again around 4:30 p.m. after work. To save time and nerves, she uses the parkitch app.

She has set the app to notify her when a parking space becomes available in the after­noon. A push message informs her that a user is releasing his parking space at 4:30 p.m. After a short location check on the map, she reserves the parking space.

At 4:15 p.m., the tracking of Lotti's car is automatically switched on via her smartphone. This allows Max to see where Lotti's car is at the moment. When Lotti arrives at 4:32 p.m., Max is already sitting in the car waiting to release his parking space for Lotti.

When Lotti is standing with her car in front of the still occupied parking space, Max gets a message that he can now drive off. He drives out and Lotti can easily park in.

Lotti knows that she will be driving to work again the next morning and enters this in the parkitch app.

So parkitch enables a "seamless" parking transfer within the system. The challenge here is to create incentives to release one's parking space via the system. The special thing about parkitch is that users no longer have to worry about the annoying search for a parking space. This saves an enormous amount of time. Although there are currently zig different parking apps, which will be explained in detail later in the business plan, parkitch stands out from them due to its high degree of innovation. For example, parkitch is the first system that shifts the search for a free parking space before the car journey. Users can thus already have found a parking space before they start their journey.

The incentive for User A to make the effort is made possible by a credit system. If User A suc­cessfully releases the parking space, he or she receives 5 credit points. User B, on the other hand, must "pay" 5 credit points for the parking space. This creates an incentive to always have at least 5 credit points in one's account so that one can "buy" new parking space at any time. How­ever, if the credits run out, the stock can be recharged via in-app purchases. The pricing for this is explained in chapter 5.

The app will be available free of charge for IOS and Android devices. Upon profile registration, 10 credits will be made available to the account free of charge - with a healthy ratio of "release parking spaces" and "use parking spaces", the app should therefore be permanently usable with­out additional costs.

The first version of the app is only specialised in finding parking spaces for vehicles in large cities. Within the app, no distinction is initially made between the different customer groups. Further developments of the app are planned based on the findings of the data analysis regarding cus­tomer groups and their behaviour, which are not discussed further in this version of the business plan. parkitch's vision is to make it possible to search for parking spaces autonomously. Users should never again have to waste time looking for a parking space. parkitch creates a coherent system and thus sets a milestone for the parking of the future.

2.2 Customer Benefits

Many city dwellers in Germany are dissatisfied with the parking situation in city centres. A study by the online car exchange "Autoscout24" in the five largest cities in Germany has shown that around two thirds (64 per cent) describe the chances of finding a parking space as poor or very poor. Over 1,000 driving licence holders in Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt am Main and Munich were surveyed. Only 7 per cent have no problems finding a parking space: they have their garage or a parking space, which, however, costs a lot of money in the big city. Two thirds (65 per cent) spend up to 50 euros a month on parking space rental, parking permits, parking fees or parking tickets. Another 16 per cent spend between 50 and 149 euros. Four per cent dig even deeper into their pockets and invest 150 euros or more every month. Only 16 per cent of German city dwellers pay nothing for parking. The main annoyance for those surveyed was the lack of free parking spaces (62 per cent) and the high parking fees (60 per cent).1,^{1 2}

Due to the difficult situation in big cities, almost half of the respondents (49 per cent) sometimes forget where their car is parked. Ten per cent even do this more often.

The parkitch customer groups are forced to find a parking space in areas with difficult parking situations. Often there are no alternatives to free public parking in these areas, e.g. residential areas in the city centre. This situation results in a functional customer need: a parking space must be found. The only component that stands between the desired customer result and its fulfilment is time and money. This is exactly where parkitch's solution comes in. parkitch meets the functional customer need by automating the search for a parking space. The customer uses the solution to be able to park his or her car for free in a plannable way and thus saves the annoying search for a parking space in everyday life. Almost half of them sometimes forget where they parked their car. With parkitch's automatic tracking, this problem is also solved.

The average German driver spends more than two days a year looking for a parking space. If you calculate the costs for the wasted time, the additional petrol and exhaust pollution, the result is an amount of over 800 euros per driver in Germany. 3,^{3 4} The customer benefit of parkitch can therefore be justified by the cost and time factor. As a customer, you save time and money.

2.3 First Mover Advantage

The parkitch system is characterised by the first-mover advantage. Since there is currently no exactly comparable product on the market, a time-related competitive advantage is achieved. The system only lives and functions if a critical mass of users is reached in a certain target area. If the critical mass is reached and the customer requirements can be satisfactorily met at the same time, the market entry barriers for this specific area will be very high. parkitch can thus achieve complete control over selected target markets - ostensibly major German cities - in a short time.

Learning effects from the experience curve enable parkitch to use efficiency improvements in development to reduce costs and increase user numbers. A further competitive edge is to be achieved through the rapid closure of cooperation partners from the automotive industry. Sim­ilarly, the free use of parkitch will create sustainable high barriers to switching, making it more difficult for future competitors to poach customers.

Looking to the future, it goes without saying that new products will emerge in the short to me­dium term. The USP of parkitch is therefore not the comparatively small technological advantage in the form of the developed app but the first market access and fast market development.

A classification of the current competitors and their strengths and weaknesses in comparison to parkitch is given in the following chapter 3.

2.4 Development App and Website

The parkitch system is being developed as an app and as a mobile-optimised website. The dura­tion of the complete development is around 2 months. The exact business plan is described in detail in chapter 4. The development will require some human and financial resources. The pro-cess will be overseen by the company's CTO, Mr J. G., and will be largely self-managed with the help of freelancers. Mr G. can ensure quality assurance of the parkitch system due to his many years of experience in the field of software engineering. An intensive relationship with the freelancers is built up from the beginning, which reduces the personnel risk in the form of capacity bottlenecks in the later course of the company.

The personnel expenses, primarily for Freelancer, for the development of the app and the design of the website amount to 20 kEUR according to current projections. A detailed breakdown of these costs can be found in Chapter 7.

3 Market and Competition

3.1 Sector and Overall Market Analysis

Parkitch acts as a parking broker for motor vehicles and thus acts as a service within the auto­motive industry. The automotive industry is currently undergoing major changes and some se­rious trends are influencing the future. Mobility trends also have a major influence on parkitch's business model. Innovation as well as technological progress and upheaval play a major role in the parking situation.

The current parking situation in major German cities has already been explained from the cus­tomer's point of view in the previous chapter under "Customer needs" - but what are the un­derlying figures and how will customer behaviour develop in the medium and long term?

The demand for parking spaces in large cities is currently primarily determined by three factors: Vehicle stock, parking stock, degree of mobility. The number of vehicles in Germany has been increasing by about 1.5 per cent annually for the past 10 years.⁵ Consequently, vehicle density is also increasing noticeably in large cities. Consequently, the number of parking spaces would have to increase coherently to avoid excess demand for parking. However, in large cities, espe­cially in residential areas, there is a lack of space for this. As a result, the parking situation has gradually deteriorated in recent decades. Increasing parking costs should serve to increase traf­fic and encourage people to switch to alternative means of transport. Furthermore, this should improve the parking situation for residents and visitors.

Another problem lies in the different garage regulations in the Federal Republic of Germany, which were introduced in the 1970s and have not changed fundamentally to this day.⁶

The megatrend of mobility, primarily caused by urbanisation, individualisation and connectivity, also complicates the parking situation in large cities.

It can thus be shown that the parking situation will continue to deteriorate in the short term due to the steadily increasing vehicle density, the steadily larger vehicles and the megatrend of mo­bility and that solutions are required to meet the resulting customer needs.

In the future, other megatrends besides mobility will disruptively change the industry. For ex­ample, the relief for the environment in the form of electromobility will lead to increasing de­mand for charging stations. Thus, the parking time of the future will become charging time. Also, parking assistants have found a place in various vehicles for quite some time and remote tech­nology is also already available on the market. With remote parking, the driver decides for him­self whether he wants to be inside or outside the parking area during the parking process.

With autonomous driving, autonomous parking is also moving more and more into the fore­ground. The pilot project "Automated Valet Parking" shows what the future of parking could look like - an automated parking service that regulates the parking process completely inde­pendently. This solution is considered the world's first infrastructure-based solution for parking services in real traffic.

A look at the trends and pilot projects in 2020 shows that the parking of the future is moving towards intelligent and self-driving systems. The most important thing here is the networking of vehicles with parking spaces. parkitch does not rely on any sensors or the like and only works via smartphone networking. This can already be a major step towards the parking of the future.

The average monthly costs for paid parking were already explained in the chapter "Customer requirements". About the price development of the market, it is first necessary to delimit it ac­cordingly. A distinction is made as follows:

- Off-Street

Parking spaces in multi-storey car parks, parking spaces in car parks, private parking spaces

- On-Street

Managed and unmanaged parking spaces in public streets The total market potential in Germany results from the following derivation. Approx. 30% of Germans live in large cities (100,000 inhabitants or more), i.e. a total of 24.9 million city dwellers. The vehicle density in large cities is approx. 0.4 per inhabitant.⁷ This results in around 9.6 million vehicles in large cities, over 50 per cent of which drive every day and a large proportion of which always need a new parking space.⁸

According to the studies already mentioned, about 65 per cent spend up to 50 EUR per month, 16 per cent, 50 EUR to 149 EUR and 4 per cent up to 150 EUR or more, resulting in total expendi­ture (from parking space rent, parking permit, parking fees or parking tickets) of about 1,308 million EUR to 730 million EUR.⁹ parkitch focuses on the unmanaged on-street market. Accordingly, charges for parking tickets and parking space rental are excluded from the calculation. The condemned costs of the poten­tial customers are parking tickets and resident parking.

Although the calculation shown does not allow the market potential of parkitch to be deter­mined exactly, it nevertheless suggests how much money there is in the revenue of parking in large cities. It also shows the prevailing cost thresholds of potential customers and how often a new parking space is needed.

3.2 Market Segments and Target Customers

The market for parking spaces in large cities can be divided by categorising the user/demand groups, their needs and preferences as well as their behaviour. For this purpose, the following characteristics can be distinguished:

Table 1: Overview of user segments in parking

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

The segments can initially be illustrated by the following graph:

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Subsequently, the potential customer groups of parkitch must be identified in the various seg­ments. For this purpose, the relevance in the form of customer needs must be determined. The following relevance analysis, which is based on studies, was carried out with the following crite- ria.¹⁰

For the following illustrations, the study "Information on available parking spaces in cities" by "Prognos AG" was included.¹¹

- the purpose of the journey,
- Users' needs and preferences when looking for a parking space or at the parking space,
- Estimates of parking duration/parking time
- and the type of possible/selectable parking space.

Table 2: Overview of the relevant assessment of the user segments in a private transport (1/2)

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Table 3: Overview of the relevant assessment of the user segments in a private transport (2/2)

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Table 4: Overview of the relevant assessment of the user segments in commercial transport

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Based on the available results, precise target groups can be derived. The indicator that classifies the different user segments as potential customers of parkitch is the "overall assessment of rel­evance". Segments with the assessment "high" and "medium to high" form a large market po­tential. Further potential can be raised in the "medium" segment. parkitch does not see any market potential if a segment has been assessed with the relevance "low".

The target customer clusters, therefore, include the following customer segments in order of priority:

- Private traffic
- Inhabitants/residents
- Employed Professional
- Commercial traffic
- Service traffic (except services in the road space)
- Business and official traffic (except public authority traffic and prioritisation to medical services)

The number of persons in the respective customer groups is precisely determined in the course of the marketing strategy; in the first step, it is only necessary to divide the clusters. Based on this, an exact customer approach can be made, which is precisely oriented to the criteria of the relevance analysis. This is how buyer personas can be identified.

Ms Kielkopf serves as an example of such a buyer persona. She runs a service for senior citizens in need of care. Her customers mostly live in residential areas of Hamburg where there are hardly any managed on-street parking spaces. She spends about 3 hours a day looking for parking spaces. Ms Kielkopf usually knows exactly how long a visit will last and when she will need a parking space and where.

With the help of this exemplary buyer persona of Mrs Kielkopf, the user segment "business and service traffic, service traffic, medical services" can be specifically addressed by marketing in business traffic.

The creation and processing of the "Buyer Personas" are explained in Chapter 5.

After the target customer clusters and their approach have been listed, market share targets must be defined. The subsequent market development is based on market size, market returns and market growth. Concerning the trends already explained, parkitch hypothesised that the on-street parking situation will continue to deteriorate in the future, whereby the market size and its growth have already been explained. Nevertheless, let's take a closer look at the user segments and their market areas.

In the medium term, a constant trend in the demand for parking spaces can be expected in the user segment "residents". Although Car-Sharing is becoming more and more important, parking spaces are still needed for it. Also, users want to find a parking space as quickly as possible, especially when using sharing services, since depending on the billing model, additional kilome­tres and minutes cause costs.

As the Corona crisis showed, the number of home office jobs is developing positively. According to estimates, this will continue after the crisis. In the user segment "professionals", for example, a decline in difficult parking situations can be expected.

The trend in the "service traffic" segment is expected to remain constant, as demand for services such as cleaning and all types of craftsmen's work will remain at least as high in the future. parkitch sees a growing market in the segment "business and service traffic". The driving forces here are the trend towards individualisation and demographic change. Mobile care services in particular will need planned parking spaces in the future.

Through the First Mover Advantage, parkitch aims to secure the majority of market shares in the segments described above. It must be emphasised again that the target market for our so­lution is the unmanaged on-street parking market. Of course, the target customers are always changing between the different markets, depending on the parking situation and occasion. This blurs the target customer segments into one another. Thus, depending on parking needs, a cus­tomer may change his associated cluster several times a day. For example, in the morning one can be found in the segment "employees" in commercial traffic and the evening in private traffic "Inhabitants/residents " on the way home. Since people's actions are largely determined by hab­its, parkitch assumes that certain patterns of behaviour will occur on certain parking occasions.

If, for example, a resident is looking for a free on-street parking space in front of his flat, he will not change his original concerns because of the parking situation but will continue to search for a parking space until the need is met by a free parking space. A direct competitor would there­fore be a company that helps users to find free parking spaces. An indirect competitor would be a company that makes it easier for users to search for paid parking spaces.

Both competitors are relevant because they could also adapt parkitch's solution and offer it as an additional service to their existing customer base. Therefore, a detailed observation of the players operating in the market and an assessment follows in the following section.

[...]

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¹ Ct. Axel Springer SE, 2018

² Ct. AutoScout24 GmbH, 2018

³ Ct. Zwick, 2019

⁴ Ct. Cookson, 2017

⁵ KBA, 2020

⁶ Ct. Busse, 2010

⁷ Deutschland e. V., 2015

⁸ Statista, 2018

⁹ Range calculated using: 65%, lower limit 10 EUR; 16% lower limit 60 EUR; 4% upper limit 200 EUR

¹⁰ The overall assessment of relevance was made using a 5-point scale from "high" (5 points) to "low" (1point).

¹¹ Simon, et al., 2015