Socar, South Korea’s popular car-ride sharing company, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, has taken a step to emerge as a leader in car-sharing and parking services. Socar has acquired the Korean online parking platform Modu Company to expand car-sharing and parking services.
Socar’s latest acquisition is part of its strategy to grow into a ‘Super-App’ by implementing a streaming mobility strategy that anyone can conveniently use anytime, anywhere. It is expected that 7 million Socar members will be able to use the service more conveniently by providing parking-related services such as mobile parking reservations and the use of parking information through the Socar app.
Super App for all vehicle-sharing, parking services
Socar aims to launch the Super App, an integrated mobility service that connects all transit options next year. The Super App will allow users to find multiple transit modes, such as car-sharing, buses, trains, and electric bikes, most quickly and effectively, the company stated. With Modu Parking, Socar plans to start a full-fledged synergy with ‘everyone’s parking lot’ in service areas such as one-way service and electric vehicle charging within 30 minutes in the metropolitan area. In addition, by adding parking-related benefits to the integrated mobility membership ‘Passport,’ the convenience of subscription service users is expected to increase.
Since 2013, Modu’s Parking Lot has provided parking information guidance, parking partnerships, and smart parking. It has grown into South Korea’s best online parking platform with 4 million app downloads and 700,000 monthly users. Modu’s Parking Lot currently provides information on 60,000 parking lots nationwide, 18,000 shared parking lots and 1,800 affiliated parking lots. In addition, it has entered into a parking sharing business agreement with local governments, including 23 Seoul, 8 Busan autonomous districts and four cities in Gyeonggi Province. It has entered into business partnerships with 15 public institutions, including Korea Airports Corporation, to open real-time parking lot data.
In addition to public and private parking lots, users can check available parking spaces near their destination, such as shopping malls and restaurants, and purchase tickets for partner parking at a discounted price. In particular, they have been working hard to solve social problems such as parking difficulties due to an increase in vehicles through a parking sharing service that provides parking spaces as a service when they are not in use.
Modu and Socar to work together to solve traffic problems
Modu Company plans to continue the independent management system under CEO Kim Dong-hyeon, even after the acquisition is complete. In addition, all existing businesses will continue and develop in a more expanded form with Socar.
Kim Dong-hyeon, CEO of Modu Company, said, “Modu’s Parking Lot has been working hard to solve the parking problem in our society through parking sharing based on a long-standing relationship of trust with stakeholders in the parking industry for the past nine years. We decided to work together with the conviction that we can make bigger changes and innovations in general.”
Socar CEO Park Jae-wook said, “Socar, which is evolving into a super app, will continue to cooperate with more companies to provide streaming mobility services that anyone can use easily and conveniently.”
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