Austin—NuPark, a startup with video technology and software that helps customers like schools and governments manage parking, has added $1 million in new funding to the $1.4 million seed round the company raised last year, CEO Kevin Uhlenhaker tells Xconomy.
That brings NuPark’s total seed money to about $2.6 million, including an early friends and family round, Uhlenhaker says. NuPark’s investors include a few big names at both the local and national levels, such as Boulder, CO-based Techstars Ventures, Rosa McCormick of Austin-based Wild Basin Investments, and the Lubbock Angel Network, he says.
NuPark, which is based in the Austin suburb of Cedar Park, offers customers a parking management system that aims to replace the traditional method of attendants pounding the pavement in search of cars that are parked where they shouldn’t be. Instead, NuPark combines the use of physical equipment, which scans cars’ license plates to search for violators, and software, which manages and processes the various parking data a client has.
The physical end of the product is simple: NuPark provides clients with video camera equipment that, if attached to something like a patrol car, can automatically scan license plates in a parking lot. That system is connected to NuPark’s back-end software, so that when the camera scans the license plate of a car that is somewhere it shouldn’t be, the attendant is alerted to issue a ticket.
NuPark’s software can help customers manage permit sales, citation appeals, e-commerce websites, and parking spot-finding applications, Uhlenhaker says. The company also offers data analytics services, such as occupancy, usage, and turnover rates at parking garages and lots, he says.
“We have the unique ability to know who is allowed to park there, but also who has parked there,” he says.
Focused predominately on organizations such as universities, cities, and airports, NuPark has customers such as Ohio State University, the city of Eugene, OR, and Texas Tech University. The last one is no coincidence: The technology was developed at Texas Tech, and NuPark licensed it from the commercialization office there.
The company uses cloud computing provider Microsoft Azure to process and operate its loads of data. NuPark now has landed contracts in 24 states.
Although NuPark hasn’t participated in a Techstars accelerator program, Blake Yeager, the managing director for the Techstars Cloud program in San Antonio, is on the startup’s board of directors as a result of the Techstars Ventures investment.
