The service is named for its rating scale for drivers' preferred level of chattiness in the car: "Bla" for not very chatty, "BlaBla" for someone who likes to talk, and "BlaBlaBla" for those who can't keep quiet.[6]
History
In December 2003, Frédéric Mazzella wanted to travel from Paris to visit his family in the French countryside for Christmas but he did not own a car and the trains were fully booked. After his sister made a 150-kilometer detour to collect him, he noticed that most cars going in his direction did not have any passengers. During nights and weekends, he began working on creating a concept to address the issue. In 2006, he bought a website called Covoiturage.fr, French for "carpooling", created in 2004.[6][7] By September 2008, it was the largest carpool website in France.[7]
In 2009, it launched a Spanish version of the site under the name of Comuto.es. Throughout the year, it opened carpool services for companies and cities, such as MAIF, IKEA, Vinci Park, RATP, Carrefour, and the city of Montrouge.
In December 2009, the company launched its mobile app.[8]
In June 2011, it introduced BlaBlaCar.com in the United Kingdom.[9]
In June 2012, an online reservation service was added to Covoiturage.fr.[10] The web service put in place its business model and began to make profits. It was also a way to attract drivers and to reach the critical mass. Between July and November, Comuto expanded to Italy, Portugal, Poland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium.[citation needed]
In April 2013, BlaBlaCar was launched in Germany.[11] Covoiturage.fr was re-branded BlaBlaCar.fr.[12][13][14]
By December 2013, BlaBlaCar had 5 million members.[15]
In January 2014, BlaBlaCar was introduced in Ukraine and Russia.[16]
In September 2014, the service had 10 million users.[17]
In January 2015, BlaBlaCar expanded to India. The company bought multiple competitors, including Carpooling in Germany,[18] Autohop in eastern Europe, and Rides in Mexico, expanding to Latin America.[19]
In 2015, the company had 290 employees on three continents and 20 million users in 19 countries. In May 2015, BlaBlaCar signed a partnership with Axa to insure its users, launching BlaBlaSure in May 2018.[20]
In April 2017, a long term rental service was offered to the best drivers.[21] It was the result of a partnership with the constructor Opel and ALD Automotive, specializing in long term rental.
On 2 May 2017, BlaBlaLines, an application for daily carpool, was launched in France.[22]
In 2017, the company closed its offices in India, Turkey and Mexico. Executives said they had spent too much and hired too aggressively in those territories. Overall, the company has become far more diversified in terms of geography. While 75% of its users were in France in 2015, by 2021 the company reported that 80% of its riders were outside of France and 60% were outside of Europe.[23]
On 30 January 2018, BlaBlaCar unveiled a new corporate identity and style guide. A new algorithm was also put in place to increase the number of trips proposed for users.[24]
In April 2018, the company acquired Less, which launched four months earlier.[25]
In November 2018, BlaBlaCar announced the purchase of long-distance coach operator Ouibus from SNCF. As part of the transaction, SNCF became a shareholder in BlaBlaCar.[26] Ouibus was rebranded BlaBlaBus and BlaBlaCar also raised $114million from SNCF and previous investors.[27] In 2019, BlaBlaCar acquired Russia's largest bus booking platform, Busfor.[28]
In April 2021, the company acquired Octobus, a Ukrainian company that develops software for bus operators to manage their finances and ticket sales.[29]
In 2021, bus seats represented 20% of all bookings on the BlaBlaCar platform.[23]
In March 2023, the company acquired Klaxit, a French startup enabling carpools on work commutes.[30][31]
Funding
In 2009, the company raised €600,000 from the founders and their friends and family.[6]
In April 2021, BlaBlaCar raised $115million.[40][41][42]
Related Research Articles
Carpooling is the sharing of car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car, and prevents the need for others to have to drive to a location themselves. Carpooling is considered a Demand-Responsive Transport (DRT) service
John Zimmer is the co-founder and former president of Lyft, an on-demand transportation company, which he founded with Logan Green in 2012.
Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional operating funds in London, India and China.
Shared transport or shared mobility is a transportation system where travelers share a vehicle either simultaneously as a group or over time as personal rental, and in the process share the cost of the journey, thus purportedly creating a hybrid between private vehicle use and mass or public transport. It is a transportation strategy that allows users to access transportation services on an as-needed basis. Shared mobility is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of transportation modes including carsharing, Bicycle-sharing systems, ridesharing companies, carpools, and microtransit.
Zimride by Enterprise Holdings was an American carpool program that matched inter-city drivers and passengers through social networking services. It was offered to universities and businesses as a matchmaking service. The company was founded in May 2007. After the launch of the Lyft app in May 2012 for intra-city rides, the Lyft app rapidly grew and became the focus of the company. Zimride officially renamed as Lyft in May 2013, and the Zimride service was sold to Enterprise Holdings in July 2013. As of July 2013, the service had over 350,000 users and had partnerships with Facebook and Zipcar.
Getaround is an online car sharing or peer-to-peer carsharing service that connects drivers who need to reserve cars with car owners who share their cars in exchange for payment.
carpooling.com was a carpooling service that connected drivers and passengers so they can share a ride. It was Europe's largest carpooling network. In 2015, it was acquired and folded into BlaBlaCar.
Logan D. Green is the chairman and former CEO of Lyft, which he co-founded with John Zimmer in 2012. Lyft grew out of Zimride, a ride share company previously founded by the duo in 2007.
Sidecar was a US-based vehicle for hire company that provided transportation and delivery services. It was founded in 2011 in San Francisco and closed on December 31, 2015.
A ridesharing company, ride-hailing service, is a company that, via websites and mobile apps, matches passengers with drivers of vehicles for hire that, unlike taxis, cannot legally be hailed from the street.
fromAtoB.com was an intermodal journey planner and online booking platform for European travel, accessible via a web browser or mobile apps for Android and iOS. All relevant means of transportation such as train, airplane, bus, and carpool could be compared and combined within one trip. The company was founded in 2008, and was based in Berlin with an office in Aachen. Service ended on December 31, 2020 due to loss of revenue because of the COVID-19 pandemic, while AllRail, a trade association, attributes it to lack of real time data provided by European state railways.
Trainline Europe is the European arm of Trainline, Europe's leading train and coach app. Through either its web interface or mobile apps, customers can purchase tickets for a variety of European rail operators. It also has loyalty cards or vouchers and with e-ticket support. In 2016, Captain Train was acquired by Trainline.
Sunrise is a discontinued electronic calendar application for mobile and desktop. The service was launched in 2013 by designers Pierre Valade and Jeremy Le Van. In October 2015, Microsoft announced that they had merged the Sunrise Calendar team into the larger Microsoft Outlook team where they will work closely with the Microsoft Outlook Mobile service.
redBus is an Indian online bus ticket booking company that provides bus ticket booking through its website and iOS and Android mobile apps. It is headquartered in Bangalore and works like a hub, acting as a medium for a network of more than 3500 bus operators, across the countries of India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Peru, and Colombia. It claims to have registered over 180 million trips, with a customer base of over 20 million. In 2018, the company achieved a GMV of ₹50 billion, with a 70% share in the Indian online bus ticketing segment.
Bolt is an Estonian mobility company that offers ride-hailing, micromobility rental, food and grocery delivery, and carsharing services. The company is headquartered in Tallinn and operates in over 500 cities in more than 45 countries in Europe, Africa, Western Asia and Latin America. The company has more than 150 million customers and more than 3 million driver and courier partners. The company has plans for an initial public offering in 2025.
Dataiku is an American artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning company which was founded in 2013. In December 2019, Dataiku announced that CapitalG—the late-stage growth venture capital fund financed by Alphabet Inc.—joined Dataiku as an investor and that it had achieved unicorn status. As of 2021, Dataiku is valued at $4.6 billion. Dataiku currently employs more than 1,000 people worldwide between offices in New York, Denver, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Munich, Frankfurt, Sydney, Singapore, Tokyo, and Dubai.
Frédéric Mazzella is a French entrepreneur and the founder of BlaBlaCar, an online marketplace for carpools.
CodinGame is a technology company editing an online platform for developers, allowing them to play with programming with increasingly difficult puzzles, to learn to code better with an online programming application supporting twenty-five programming languages, and to compete in multiplayer programming contests involving timed artificial intelligence, or code golf challenges.
Wingly is an international company based in Paris, France. Running an online flightsharing platform, they connect passengers and local private pilots. Private pilots are able to offer seats on their flights departing from local aerodromes. The website is part of the sharing economy. When offering a flight, the pilot shares the operational expenses with their passengers.
Devialet is a French audio technology company that produces a line of speakers (Phantom) and amplifiers (Expert). It was founded in 2007 in Paris.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
