This application will revolutionize city parking

Unclassified

While so many start-ups are struggling to raise funds today, Samir Boutamdja springs a surprise with Macaron, an application that makes parking more fluid in large cities by indicating to motorists, in real time, unoccupied parking spaces. A small revolution in the experience of urban mobility.

So no one before Samir Boutamdja had ever thought about it? Create an application which, like a Waze parking, directs drivers to vacant spaces so that those who want them can know where they are? It is clear that no European rival has ever managed to stem the scourge of cars going in circles.

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Ingenious pilot

Macaron’s success is based first and foremost on truly innovative technology, whose predictive algorithm and intelligent sensors locate a location in three minutes. A real technological challenge won by this French start-up, whose artificial intelligence is so fine that it is capable of mapping, from Paris, a town in Nebraska or Nepal.

After having raised 1.8 million euros solely from business angels and conquering around fifteen partner cities, including Paris, Samir Boutamdja says he is ready to take his tech to every city in the world. With chosen words, a deep voice, Samir Boutamdja names his partner, Abdou Bourou, technical director of Macaron and, he says, the linchpin of the system.

“Macaron is a Deeptech company whose nuclear heart is an AI that uses satellite and aerial images as well as street views. Because the city is a living and evolving organism, and the locations also move. Our algorithm makes it possible to integrate all the data on a single screen. We are the only ones, to date, to achieve this performance,” constate Samir Boutamdja.

Futuristic parking app

Supported by Microsoft and Nvidia in their role of helping AI start-ups, Macaron tested two versions before the current third, which meets the ambitions of a global offer of the app, unique in integrating all payment methods, including Apple Pay or PayPal. And the young entrepreneur in his forties explains that he deliberately turned away from positions “served on a silver platter”of those who satisfy the ego without giving enough appetite.

While his career was shining in advertising, Samir Boutamdja wanted to start a business. Macaron fulfilled his expectations. The surprisingly placid, hyperactive person is never short of arguments. While the City of Paris was still ignoring its offer at the start of the summer, it immediately decided to offer the system free of charge throughout the period of the Olympic Games.

But the most severe obstacle to overcome stands before him: convincing Deeptech investors, the only ones capable of financing its large-scale deployment – ​​a next Series A funding round is planned in the months or weeks to come. come –, of the strong international potential of Macaron. Proof of this has already been provided by the signing of a joint venture – a small feat in this kingdom known to be demanding and suspicious – with the mobility branch of the leading Saudi conglomerate Nesma.

Could more powerful rivals thwart this move into orbit? “I do not fear large groups, their power is also their weakness, because innovating requires precisely breaking their way of working, Analyze Samir Boutamdja. The only competition we could fear is that of a start-up that works in the shadows and suddenly emerges into the open. » But for now, the rocket is on its launch pad. Takeoff to follow.

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