In today's blog, we feature an In the Spotlight interview with Hiran Ravat, CEO of Go2Sim.
Following Go2Sim’s recent rebrand and strong presence at Parkex, Hiran shares his perspective on why connectivity should no longer be treated as an afterthought, how Go2Sim’s parking-sector heritage sets it apart, and where the company is headed as it expands beyond SIM cards into broader IoT connectivity solutions.
Go2Sim on Why Connectivity Is Parking’s Most Undervalued Asset
Q: For the audience that might not know Go2Sim or yourself yet, could you provide us with a brief introduction?
Hiran Ravat:
My name is Hiran Ravat, and I am the CEO of Go2Sim.
By way of background, I have been in the telecoms space for around 30 years, so I have pretty much grown up in the industry. I have worked for two of the biggest network operators in the sector, Vodafone and Telefonica, and in both organizations, I fundamentally focused on IoT.
That work covered different sectors, including retail, security, core enterprise, and a huge range of different customers, customer types, and verticals around IoT connectivity and solutions.
I am now at Go2Sim, where I have been for two months. As for Go2Sim, the company has been around for ten years. We are a connectivity and IoT solutions company focused on the parking sector and the parking industry. We were born out of the parking industry, and we have a strong heritage and specialism in the parking sector.
Q: Could you tell us a little bit about the role it plays within the parking and mobility industry?
Hiran Ravat:
I believe connectivity is undervalued and often treated as an afterthought in the value chain of parking and parking applications.
The reason I say this is because I go to parking events, meet customers, and do general research on the parking industry. There is a strong digital transformation-led thought process around technology, with many applications being developed, and all of these rely on good connectivity.
Connectivity is so important to these applications that, with all the money being invested in the sector, if you do not have the right type of connectivity and the right partner in the connectivity space, those solutions can almost become a hindrance rather than delivering the value they were originally designed for.
Connectivity may be the smallest part of the value chain in the parking industry, but I would argue that it is the most vital part.
The more we have these conversations with customers, especially those who have not worked with us before or who are experiencing connectivity challenges, the more we see how important it is to help solve those issues.
So, connectivity is vital for this industry, and it is really important to have the right partnership.
Q: Would you say that Go2Sim is the right kind of organization to partner with, especially in this particular industry?
Hiran Ravat:
If I talk about why Go2Sim is the right partner, my background probably gives me the most relevant perspective here.
I come from network operators, which are the founders of connectivity. These are global organizations with massive resources behind them, and generally, they can be very cost-effective. However, the challenge is that IoT has grown massively. It is now present in so many different verticals, different aspects of our lives, and different enterprises, that it requires a certain level of specialism.
Parking needs that specialism because it is evolving rapidly. We are seeing ANPR being used much more than it used to be, with different levels of technology being introduced. We are also seeing developments in pay-and-display machines, and EV charging is growing. So, the requirements from the parking sector for connectivity are now much more important and much more widespread than they used to be.
When I look at Go2Sim and why we are the right partner, it is because we are not just another tech company set up to buy connectivity and resell it to customers. Our business was founded and born out of the parking sector. Our founders are from the industry, and they experienced firsthand the challenges of working with non-specialist connectivity suppliers.
Even at a very basic level, that is the difference between a specialist and a non-specialist. Big network operators, of course, have a lot of technological expertise. But the challenge comes when they do not understand the end-to-end applications and the people in the field who have to deal with connectivity issues in the parking sector.
Go2Sim was founded to address those challenges. The founders experienced the difficulties of using generic connectivity solutions in the sector and then having to deal with the problems that came from that.
They have been really invested in working with the industry and the ecosystem. That includes people who do not buy our services or consume them directly, but who understand how they work because they are installing applications that use them.
That, I think, is the vital difference between Go2Sim and other connectivity players in the market.
When you go to parking events, you often see Go2Sim. If you speak to many customers that have rolled out large-scale projects in the parking sector, they use Go2Sim. They do not come to us purely because we are easy to deal with or because they know us. They come to us because our expertise and heritage in this space go far beyond that of other connectivity companies.
When we talk about advancements in the industry, it is not just about being a big organization and looking at the application itself. You need to work with the ecosystem, because fundamentally, you will be working with installers. You need to know how to deal with things when they do not go right.
That is what we have done really well. We have integrated ourselves within the parking ecosystem to make sure everyone knows how we work, what we do, and that we keep things really simple for everybody. You cannot put a value on how much of a difference that makes to this industry.
Q: Go2Sim is in the name and in the brand: SIM cards. Is that still the core focus for the company, or where are things headed?
Hiran Ravat:
I think our brand and name were born out of the fact that, originally, when we entered the market, it was simply about how we could insert mobile connectivity into different applications and add value around mobile connectivity.
Over the ten years we have been in the sector, we have done that to a large extent with mobile. Of course, there is still a lot more to do, and the market is always evolving.
But the value we are now bringing to the market, and the big shift from where we have been, is to provide additional value services so that we become a one-stop shop and IoT solutions provider for this industry.
Our strategy going forward is to be the provider that can offer fixed-line services, but again, not just fixed-line services that we resell. We want to provide specialist services for this industry and for the applications that are going to consume them.
We are also looking at satellite solutions. Satellite solutions are growing massively within the sector. The parking industry is probably one of the best examples of where satellite connectivity is needed, because there are many areas in the world that do not have mobile connectivity and cannot get a fixed-line network. In those environments, satellite connectivity becomes the ideal solution.
But again, the value is in providing managed satellite solutions, support, and expertise specifically for the parking sector. That is what we are bringing.
We are not just giving the parking sector different technologies because of the type of technology they are. It is about bringing all these different technology types together, integrating them into the Go2Sim platform, and ensuring that we have control, management, and visibility around them.
We then provide that to the parking sector so customers know how it works, in the same way that our mobile solutions work, with everything integrated into one platform.
We will keep developing that. We are a customer-led organization. If our customers want more visibility of their devices and the hardware they use to connect those devices, we will also integrate that into the platform.
We will continue evolving with the market and with our customers. The key thing for us is that we want to be the number one provider and supplier for any IoT connectivity solution in the parking sector.
About Go2Sim
At Go2Sim we find the right SIM package for your business needs.
Meet Go2Sim, a pioneering technology company at the forefront of IoT solutions. Boasting a compact yet highly talented team of innovators, Go2Sim has developed market leading technology that combines seamless connectivity, with a back-office portal that combines the functionality of our competitors while enhancing and refining them to create a superior solution.
About Parking Network
Parking Network is the leading information source for parking. We connect professionals through our online and offline channels. On our online platform parking.net, we publish the latest news, product showcases, job openings, and tenders related to parking. On our platform, you can access the most complete industry and parking professionals directory. Offline, we host niche-specific networking events such as the Airport Parking Network Event.
