• SpotUs is a Romanian proptech that helps landlords and their tenants manage booking- and access-related issues, specializing in commercial real estate
• It has successfully rolled out and tested a new feature for monitoring and managing parking lots
• The startup is looking to add more features and expand its sales team

This July, Romanian proptech B2B SaaS startup SpotUs announced adding a new feature to its suite, which should make the suite interesting for a broader clientele. The new feature is called SpotUs.alert, and it monitors parking lots, verifying that the vehicles don’t exceed the allotted time.

Ovidiu Ciurte and his team started SpotUs in 2021 when they encountered a number of problems managing their office time. In a nutshell, SpotUs’ features deal with such problems are as follows:

• booking a desk (if the client work in a flexible format);
• booking a parking spot;
• getting access in the building (a virtual card replacing plastic badges);
• managing visitor flows (give their guests access into the building by sending them a QR code);
• sharing resources to optimize their costs (such as vacant parking spots during weekends).

These features mainly have the tenant in mind, but the landlord also benefits from SpotUs. It is a great tool to automate interaction with tenants, understand how the space is being used and take the right measures, eliminate manual work for reception and security staff, etc.

Another Side Project That Grew into a Feature

The service currently works in 9 buildings in Romania with +15000 people using the app. But in 2021, when SpotUs was started, it was a side project for Mr Ciurte’s team whose main interest lied in the field of machine learning.

SpotUs’ new feature – SpotUs.alert – was apparently developed as one of ML projects by Mr Ciurte’s team. The service monitors parking lots, registers when vehicles park and leave, and detects vehicles that exceed the allotted time. It then shares the collected information with the landlord. If a violation occurs, a notification is generated and sent to the landlord (and also to the vehicle owner if they are present in the database).

SpotUs.alert can be used as part of the SpotUs suite or a stand-alone feature.

British Soil as the Testing Ground

The UK market was chosen as the first one where SpotUs.alert should be rolled out.

‘The UK has stricter regulations when it comes to parking monitoring, which made it the best market to start with for this new module. We implemented it with a client in the UK and have now decided to make it part of SpotUs.Space, as we see its benefits for office developers and facility management companies,’ Mr Ciurte comments.

As of now, SpotUs.alert monitors about 600+ parking lots in the UK, but – same as other SpotUs’ features – clients can seamlessly roll it out anywhere in the world.

More Features and Other Plans

Speaking of other features, Mr Ciurte shares that another module is in the works at the moment, that aims to add an extra safety layer in emergency situations.

‘Office buildings have special emergency gathering areas and designated people to monitor presence. This is done manually, with a list in the best case. Through this new module, SpotUs.Emergency, we add a QR code to every employee’s SpotUs app, and a scanning option to the designated team member responsible with tracking everyone is out and safe. This digitized process will make monitoring safer and faster,’ Mr Ciurte explains.

Even though the UK was chosen as the testing ground for the new feature, the CEE region remains SpotUs’ priority. The company is working with new partners to grow sustainably, having e.g. become members of Proptech Bulgaria and benefiting from their help with other countries as well.

To reinforce further expansion, SpotUs is actively looking to expand its team and bringing new talent on board, particularly in the department of sales.