Since his 2018 graduation, computer engineering alumnus Sameer Saran has kept busy growing his company, ParkStash: “the AirBnb of parking.” You may have seen Saran on virtual alumni panels last year, where he shared his best advice for engaging with campus and the Silicon Valley resources available to most graduate students. We caught up with Saran recently to hear about his business.

Sameer Saran, ’18 MS Computer Engineering

“COVID did hit us badly (as it did a lot of organizations and people), but we have kept on going and building over the last 18 months both in terms of adapting our business model and making lots of innovative pivots in our product,” Saran says.

“One of the big updates is that we have signed a contract and are now the Official Parking App for Woodward Dream Cruise – presented by Ford, this is one of the world’s largest one-day automotive events, drawing 1.5 million people and 40,000 classic cars each year from around the globe. We have published a detailed article regarding this partnership. We also locked another partnership with Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) – Southeast Michigan’s only regional public transportation, to offer a seamless park and ride experience for visitors of Woodward Dream Cruise. You can read about our partnership with SMART in this article.

“By understanding the change in market due to COVID better over the last 18 months and building new modules in our application, we are now engaging in communications with cities, towns and municipalities. Some of the new modules that we have developed include: 

• Enterprise Dashboard – Provides one platform for transporting and parking departments to keep track of revenue, make data driven decisions, improve operational efficiency and provides sleek analytics solutions;
• E-permits – Ability to assign and reserve residential, visitor, employee, business parking permits – used by entities like cities, universities and apartment complexes;
• Interactive Citation Map – Provides detailed citation analytics to managers on [a] dashboard;
• EV – Pay, park and charge your EV via ParkStash. Provides charge % to enforcement officers utilizing EV’s, enabling notification of when the vehicle is ready to pick up.”

Saran says that ParkStash is getting ready to make another large announcement about a new city partnership. We can’t wait to see what more is around the corner for this SJSU alumnus who exemplifies the outstanding entrepreneurship qualities of many graduate student Spartans. Congratulations, Sameer Saran!