Once Worked At A Toll Plaza For ₹250/Day; Today, He Runs A Bangalore-based ₹7 Crore Annual Revenue Parking Infrastructure & Mobility Startup

In India’s bustling cities, parking is no longer a minor inconvenience—it is a daily operational bottleneck for businesses.

From tech parks to standalone offices, the challenge is the same: insufficient parking spaces, frustrated employees, and chaos at entry and exit points.

That is exactly the market gap a Bangalore-based startup called Gupio is solving, with a sharp focus on mobility and parking infrastructure.

Founded by Gurumurthy C, Gupio is a parking infrastructure and mobility startup delivering tech-enabled solutions for corporate workspaces across India. 

The company’s journey is rooted in the realities of the Indian startup ecosystem, where grit often matters as much as strategy—and where lived experience can become a founder’s biggest advantage.

From Davanagere to Bangalore: Gurumurthy’s Initial Journey

Gurumurthy grew up in a lower-middle-class household in a small village in Karnataka’s Davanagere district.

Like many young Indians who shoulder responsibility early, he started working odd jobs while still studying, including stints at restaurants and retail shops.

Even though he was academically gifted, financial pressure forced him to pause his education after completing 12th grade in 2014.

He moved to Bangalore searching for stability, but his first few steps were tough. Coming from a Kannada-medium background and struggling with English, he took a job at a toll plaza, earning ₹250 for an eight-hour shift.

“I had no choice but to start working immediately after my schooling. My priority was supporting my family financially and earning a decent and honest living,” recalls Gurumurthy C during an exclusive interview with Startup Pedia.

After six months, he joined a Unibic biscuit factory, but it lasted only three months.

The work was hard, the growth limited, and the learning curve steep. Yet, those early years quietly built the resilience that would later define him as an entrepreneur.

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Learning the Business Game:

His first proper salaried role came as a salesperson at Chroma, where he simultaneously began improving his English and professional confidence.

Within six months, he moved to Vivo, and his career trajectory changed—retail sales taught him persuasion, customer behaviour, and structured performance.

At Vivo, he rose through the ranks and eventually became a trainer, sharpening his ability to build teams and manage processes. But Gurumurthy was never looking for comfort.

“I didn’t want to stay in one company for too long. I wanted to gain practical insights into how different businesses in different sectors work,” he says.

That hunger for exposure led him to Park+, a parking management company, where he worked as a branch manager in a parking management setup.

The experience introduced him to the operational complexity of parking management and mobility—from manpower planning to site-level execution.

His final corporate role was as a territory sales manager at Reliance JioMart, overseeing city-level operations in Bangalore.

By January 2023, he had reached a decision.

“I quit my hard-earned corporate career because the dream was always entrepreneurship. This dream started back in school,” Gurumurthy reflects on his journey.

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Identifying Market Gaps in Corporate Parking Chaos:

When Gurumurthy began researching his next move, he looked for problems that were real, recurring, and painful enough for businesses to pay for.

What stood out was the mess around corporate parking in India—especially for companies operating in tech parks, co-working spaces, and standalone offices.

In most tech parks, parking capacity accommodates only about 10% of the workforce, often on a first-come, first-served basis. The rest—especially car owners—are forced to park outside, walk long distances, or depend on public transport.

The situation is worse during peak hours, where traffic bottlenecks become a daily productivity drain.

Valet services existed, but they were inconsistent and risky. Gurumurthy observed that the market was highly fragmented, with poor training, weak safety protocols, and minimal technology integration.

"Most parking and valet services were informal. There was no proper system, no tracking, and no accountability," Gurumurthy explains.

Gupio’s initial Journey began in March 2023, when Gurumurthy launched a pilot using ₹10 lakhs from his savings.

The goal was simple: validate whether organised additional parking and smart valet services could work reliably for modern workplaces.

The pilot ran for four months, initially in Karnataka, and delivered strong results, prompting him to formally register the company as Gupio Services Private Limited in July 2023.

That is when Gupio’s mobility and parking management services went live at a pan-India level, expanding beyond experimentation into scale.

However, the early months were not smooth. The challenges were operational and personal—building a solid team, managing cash flows, and setting up tech.

“In the beginning, I handled marketing, operations, and finance alone. The hardest part was building the technology team,” Gurumurthy C, the founder & CEO of Gupio, admits to Startup Pedia.

Four Key Services Powering Gupio’s Model:

Today, Gupio’s offering is structured around four key services, each designed to solve a specific pain point in urban workspaces.

First is the ‘Additional Parking Services’, where Gupio identifies and manages nearby parking spaces to offset shortages within tech parks. This includes security, entry-exit flow, staffing, and CCTV monitoring—essentially turning unmanaged spaces into organised parking infrastructure.

Second is the ‘Gupio Valet Services’, an add-on that makes parking seamless for employees and visitors. Gupio’s differentiator is its use of background-verified and highly trained professional valet drivers, reducing risk and improving trust.

“We don’t park vehicles randomly on streets. We secure contracted parking compounds so users feel safe,” Gurumurthy comments.

Third is the ‘Gupio Valet App’, a tech-enabled layer that replaces paper tokens with one-tap vehicle requests, live GPS tracking, and photo-based verification. The app is built for transparency, faster retrieval, and fewer disputes.

Finally, the ‘Shuttle Services by Gupio’ solves last-mile mobility by transporting users between verified parking sites and office locations. It is positioned as a scalable, safety-first solution, especially in congested areas where walking long distances is not feasible.

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Growth, Revenue Momentum, and Targets:

In under three years, Gupio has served over 50 corporate clients and currently manages the mobility of around 2,000 cars and 4,000 bikes daily.

The company’s growth has been reflected in its revenue trajectory as well.

In FY 2023–24, Gupio generated around ₹30 lakhs. By FY 2024–25, that number jumped to over ₹3.2 crores—more than 10x growth. Now, the company is chasing an ambitious milestone: exceeding ₹7 crores in annual turnover by FY 2025–26.

Gupio’s presence spans India’s top metros, including Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Gurugram, and Noida.

“We can expand to any city of any size if demand is strong enough, because the model is scalable and the technology keeps improving,” Gurumurthy comments.

The Bangalore-based startup currently employs 55+ in-office staff and 150+ valet drivers, and it continues to expand its on-ground strength as demand rises.

Differentiators, Funding Stance, and the Road Ahead:

Gupio is also generating buzz through word-of-mouth, with clients such as Cred, Groww, SmartWork, Epsilon, Sharechat, LendingKart, Cuemath, Brane, and many more.

For corporate decision-makers, Gupio’s pitch is clear: reliable, tech-enabled parking with measurable outcomes.

Additionally, Gupio is currently offering a 7-day free trial and demo to let potential clients experience its smart parking and valet solutions firsthand. This no-cost trial allows corporates, co-working spaces, and other businesses to test the services without commitment.

“Our market differentiators are simple—contracted parking spaces under our management, professional valet drivers, and technology-driven services for parking management that are unmatched in this segment,” says Gurumurthy, pointing to Gupio’s USPs.

So far, it has remained a bootstrapped startup, reinvesting cash flows to scale. But the company is now open to strategic investment opportunities.

“We have not raised any external funding yet, but we are open to the right partnerships to scale faster in a competitive market,” he reveals.

Looking ahead, Gupio plans deeper expansion across tier-1 and tier-2 cities, with an emphasis on scalable, cost-efficient, and sustainable mobility powered by innovation and technology.

One of the biggest future bets is ‘Gupio Garages’, a planned 2027 launch aimed at building tech-enabled smart garage services across India.

With the Indian parking systems market projected to reach US$ 832.05 million by 2030, the opportunity is large—and the timing is right.

For Gurumurthy C, the story is not just about building a startup; it is about building proof that the right idea, executed with discipline, can change lives.

“Ultimately, our vision is to grow cities, create employment, empower businesses, and redefine urban mobility in India,” Gurumurthy concludes—still grounded, but clearly thinking bigger than parking infrastructure alone.

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