This Cobble Hill entrepreneur wants to give every New Yorker their own valet

Most people would trust a valet to park their car at a hotel or a restaurant. But would you trust a driver you don’t know to park your car on the streets of New York City? What if it meant avoiding an alternate side parking ticket?

Rishi Ganesh hopes that you will. He’s the founder of Valet Network, a new service that’s aiming to give every frustrated New York driver their own on-demand valet. For $10, you can summon a valet to park your car for you. Pony up an extra $3 and they’ll return the car to you later. The company currently operates in Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, and the Lower East Side of Manhattan. 

Ganesh started the company while studying finance at NYU. After class, he and some friends would walk to the Lower East Side, carrying signs advertising that they would park your car for you. But the idea for Valet Network actually came to him long before, during his childhood growing up in India. There, he told the Star-Revue, “ubiquitous, cheap valet parking” is considered standard. So, after a friend got hit with a parking ticket while at the airport, he decided to bring the idea stateside.

The biggest difference between Ganesh’s new service and its origins abroad is the pay. According to data sourced from the Economic Research Institute and open positions posted online, the average pay for a valet attendant in India is about ₹150 per hour, which equates to less than $2. In comparison, a standard valet attendant in the United States makes about $18 per hour.

Ganesh, meanwhile, stated that he pays his valets “a standard base pay of $25 per hour,” alongside 100% of any tips given through the service. This is how he’s been able to poach valets from nearby garages, building a group of 15 drivers working on “a contractor basis” to respond to users’ calls.

The valets travel between bookings either on bike, scooter, or foot, reporting empty spaces as they go so other valets know where to park. Ganesh still parks cars, too. Together, the group can handle multiple cars each hour, including during alternate side parking (ASP) periods, where for $15 they’ll move your car out of the street cleaner’s way, then bring it back once the ASP period is up.

To some, a service like this might seem excessive. We’ve already handed off food delivery, furniture installation, and even standing in line to gig workers. Do car owners, already seen as privileged by many, really need an on-call valet to handle their parking?

But if tickets are anything to go by, New York’s drivers might need the help. In fiscal year 2026, the New York Police Department (NYPD) issued about 3,000 tickets for parking in front of fire hydrants in Red Hook, Carroll Gardens, and Cobble Hill (the 76th Precinct). That’s about $345,000 in fines. “No standing” violations earned 5,755 tickets, adding up to about $650,000.

Things get really out of control when you look at tickets issued for alternate side parking violations. Looking at the same period, the NYPD issued a whopping 21,661 tickets to drivers parked on the wrong side of the street, just in the 76th Precinct. At $65 a ticket, that comes to $1,407,985 in fines. Suddenly, paying someone $15 to move your car doesn’t seem so extreme.

While an inexpensive valet service has a lot of potential, business has been relatively slow so far. In Carroll Gardens, Ganesh estimates he’s averaged about nine customers per day over the last month. And he’s reinvesting heavily into the business: Valet Network made $2,150 in bookings during the week of August 16, and $2,000 of that went into salaries, insurance, and a multimedia marketing campaign. 

One place where Ganesh spends a lot of time promoting his business is Reddit’s r/CarrollGardens board. Its users have met Ganesh’s posts with a decent amount of skepticism, although he’s tried to answer their most pressing questions, like one on the topic of insurance, where he says that every parking job is insured for $250,000. Still, confusion over how the service works and its business model has kept Redditors at bay. Reviews are scarce so far, though the few that exist are positive.

The lack of reviews prompted me to test out the service myself. On a humid afternoon at the start of September, I drove to Carroll Gardens, double-parked on a crowded street, and fired up the app. It only took a moment to link me with a valet—Rishi Ganesh himself, to my surprise.

Ganesh strolled up two minutes later, hauling a backpack and umbrella. After a brief conversation, he read me out a code that I entered into the app to verify his identity, and I handed him the keys. He drove off in my car, around the corner and out of sight. A few minutes later, he called to ask if I wanted the keys back, or if he should hold onto them for later. I let him keep them.

Since Ganesh had told me that he would return the car to me whether I was at the original drop-off spot or not, I took the opportunity to test the service—biking to the southeast corner of Prospect Park, miles out of the coverage zone but not so far that I’d look like a total jerk.

When I requested the pickup, I was expecting a rejection. To my surprise, I got back a message saying he’d be there in 15 minutes. Right on time, Ganesh pulled up across the street.

Since I put my real name into the app, Ganesh knew who I was—and he knew from our interview a few days earlier that I was writing an article. So this may have been preferential treatment (he mentioned that if I’d been farther away, or if he’d been busier, he wouldn’t have driven my car to me), but there is no clear distance limit at this time.

The Valet Network app had some small issues, but overall, it was a pleasant and painless process. I’d use the service again, especially if it expands to busier areas.

“I’ve shortlisted a couple of neighborhoods,” Ganesh said when asked about his future plans, naming Park Slope and FiDi, among others. “I’d say that the biggest roadblock … is some sort of investment. I think the scale and ambition that I have for this company is something that only venture capital could solve.”

For now, Valet Network is a pretty lean operation. But if Ganesh’s aggressive business plan pays off—and if free street parking remains the norm—the app might become a mainstay on every NYC driver’s smartphone.